


In the Woods

by sendatsu



Series: This Isn't How It Works On Teen Wolf! [3]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: ;D, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Anal Sex, Angst, Animal Transformation, Cultural References, Detectives, Drama, F/M, FINALLY THE SEX ARRIVES, Gore, Gun Violence, Humor, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Masturbation, Monsters, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Slow Build, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, Werewolves, bottom!Koz, references to cannibalism, top!Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:39:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5127983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sendatsu/pseuds/sendatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Ombric.”  Katherine made a face that practically screamed ‘I love you, but please shut up!’</p><p>Jack glanced toward Koz and saw he was looking at the two with a sort of fond amusement that had no place being directed toward these strangers.  Then he remembered that Koz had a teenage daughter.  Katherine at that moment was embodying all teenagers everywhere when faced with embarrassing parents.  It wasn’t that Jack wasn’t sympathetic to why this plucked at Koz’s heart strings, but he had a sneaking suspicion it might cloud his judgement.</p><p>“All right,” Koz said.  “If it will help you make your cure, you can stay here.”</p><p>Jack bit his lip.  Like that.</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In the days after Jo’s death, Koz had struggled to keep himself busy. Seraphina kept him on his toes, but tending to her needs had become second nature to him long ago. He had to push himself harder, find something else--something more to focus on or else he’d start to think and feel--and thinking and feeling hurt. That was how Koz had ended up a hunter. He needed to be kept busy, and Astor appreciated the assistance, especially considering his experience in police and detective work. By the time he’d stopped pushing himself to stay busy, three years had passed. He’d burnt out all his leads on the White Wolf and Seraphina was more attached to her babysitter than she was to him.

By then, the pain had lessened significantly, and he was able to step back and become a father again.

Now that he’d left Seraphina, he found both he and Jack were implementing his old method of working around the pain. Unfortunately this was easier said than done. There was little to do at the cabin. It was only one room, so it didn’t take long to clean. They got most of what they needed through Koz’s storage locker or the Whitestown grocery so they didn’t need to forage for food or water.

The only amenities they didn’t have were a laundry machine and a dishwasher. They didn’t have all that many clothes or dishes to clean--but they relished the opportunity to clean the few they had just so they had something to do.

Koz hesitated to even leave the cabin, knowing that after the incident with Jack’s sister, North and Bunny would most likely be combing the woods for wolves. They’d been lucky until now for two reasons. The first was that, shortly after they’d left the scene at Jack’s house, a storm had rolled in and washed away a good portion of the evidence they’d left behind. Their second stroke of good fortune was that the Burgess authorities had handed the case over to animal control--the police department might have been thorough enough to find their tree stand, but the local animal catchers were more concerned with what was on the ground. He and Jack had cleared it all out the next night. There hadn’t been much sense watching the house--Annie Overland and her daughter had left to stay with a relative until the town had settled down once more.

They didn’t catch any sign of Manny or his pack.

As the days passed, Koz would exercise just to pass the time. Other times he’d wander far from the cabin, searching for signs of hunters or werewolves. Often times he’d bring Jack along on these little ventures, for no other reason than because if he didn’t, the boy would just linger around the cabin with nothing to do. He and Jack hardly spoke to one another most days.

They established a silent routine. Each day they woke and whoever slept on the bed (since there was only the one twin) had to make breakfast, while whoever slept on the floor put their bedding away. They ate breakfast in an awkward silence, then washed and dried the dishes. They showered if the fancy took them, but neither felt terribly compelled to get cleaned up when there was no one to impress.

They spent of the rest of their days walking the forest, edging the area that Koz was starting to consider their territory. It was a path they’d followed enough times that a decent tracker would be able to tell exactly where they’d traveled.

They’d return home toward evening, go to sleep, then start it all over again the next day.

Koz suspected Jack resented him, or else was just too miserable to speak. Koz felt similarly, and the silence only gave him more time to think about how much he’d rather be at home with Seraphina. He’d lay awake at night, restless from a long, boring day, and think of her opening the letter, cringing at what he remembered of his writing. He knew what he’d written by way of apology and farewell was not enough. Not nearly enough. All he could do about it was watch the shadows shift on the ceiling and sink deeper into his shame.

As the days passed the nights grew colder. Sleeping on the floor became less and less comfortable as the chill seeped through the floorboards. Some mornings there was frost trimming the window panes. It made Koz nervous. They were going to have a rough winter, he could already tell.

It was on one of these brisk days that their quiet, miserable lifestyle came to an abrupt end.

They were making their way around their territory. They’d started to complete their usual circuit around the area well into the day and the path they took was increasingly obvious. Because of this, Koz had elected to make a new path, heading further from their usual border.

He’d grown so accustomed to trees and branches, the corner of a tent peaking out between foliage stood out like a sore thumb. He slowed his pace and silently gestured toward the tent, as Jack slowed behind him.

“Are we near the campsites?” Jack whispered, his tone laced with doubt.

Koz shook his head. He was perturbed, but ultimately knew it didn’t matter. They’d simply have to turn around and be wary of running into the campers.

The wind changed, carrying with it the biting scent of winter and the sickly sweet smell of decay.

He straightened from his crouch and made his way straight to the tent.

“Koz?”

“Stay there, Jack.” Koz suspected he was about to see something distinctly unpleasant and he didn’t want to expose Jack to it as well. He cleared the brush line and found he was unfortunately right.

The campsite looked calm and normal. The tent flap was open, lazily shifting in the breeze while a fire pit simmered, the last of its embers finally dying in the cold air.

At the end of the clearing, a body lay face down on the ground. It was quite dead, nearly entirely stripped of flesh--muscle and viscera included. Shredded clothing lay around and tangled across the skeleton, soaked red and difficult to distinguish from the equally shredded flesh that had somehow escaped.

“Oh my God.”

Koz whirled to see Jack standing just behind him, his eyes wide and face turning nearly green. “Don’t look,” Koz said, stepping toward him.

“I can’t stop,” Jack moaned, his eyes fixed on the corpse as Koz put a hand to his shoulder and gently pushed him back. “God, it smells.”

Koz frowned as the boy continued to stare, unmoving. He looked back at the body once more. “Yes, it does.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jack glance his way. “It’s probably worse for you,” he said after a moment.

Koz shrugged. It was. It was awful. “I’m more accustomed to it.” He took a few steps toward the body and sniffed, wincing as the stink seared its way through his senses. “I don’t think it was a werewolf,” he said, rubbing his irritated nose and blinking his watering eyes.

“Do you think it might’ve just been . . . a bear or something?” Jack asked, voice as doubtful as it was hopeful.

“Could be.” Koz’s nose crinkled in disgust and he ended up approaching the body with his fingers tightly pinching his nostrils shut. He heard Jack take a step back, then several more, and then several more. He thought maybe Jack was going to be sick, but instead he spoke. 

“Uh . . . Koz?” The younger man spoke in a tone that implied you needed to turn around immediately or be eaten. 

Koz whirled to see Jack standing far, far back, his head tilted up and his expression horrified. Koz hurried to his side and followed his gaze. The hair stood up along the back of his neck as his eyes focused on a set of bloody--and incredibly human--hand and foot prints going up the side of a massive oak overlooking the camp.

“You don’t think . . . he just got attacked by something and then he tried to climb away and fell?” Jack offered.

Koz looked down at the body, his stomach turning. “Not unless he put his shoes on afterwards.”

Jack looked from the shoes just barely on the skeleton’s feet to the bare footprints on the tree trunk. “Okay,” he licked his lips. “I’m ready to go now.”

Koz shook his head. “I’ve got to examine the body.” He approached the still form.

“Uh--Koz, what if whatever did this comes back?”

“The longer the body is left out like this, the more likely we’ll lose any useful clues as to whatever killed them.” He nearly gagged as his proximity to the body threatened to smother him. “There’s several supernatural beings that could leave human-like hand and footprints. It could even be a harmless one that just happened to discover a dead body.” 

He breathed sparingly through his mouth as he crouched beside the mess and tried his best at an examination. The limbs were all dislocated--but this probably happened as the carcass was picked over. The head was intact--but the neck was snapped. There was nothing to suggest any other cause of death other than the broken neck--and there was no guarantee that whatever left the prints had killed the camper.

The ribs were broken and almost all were pulled out and thrown about, stripped of flesh. He was thankful for this--he could look at the teeth marks left on the bones without staying too near the body. He gathered a few shards of ribs and hurried back toward Jack, where the air wasn’t quite so foul.

He held the pieces up to the light seeping between the tree branches and felt a pang of longing sudden and fierce. North could take one look at teeth marks, claw marks, or paw prints and instantly tell what had made it and how old it was. He wished the old Russian was here, all he could discern from the bones was that the bite marks were too big for a coyote.

He flipped through the bones he’d gathered, aware of Jack watching him uneasily. He turned one rib this way and that and let out a heavy sigh. He turned the bone for Jack to see, pointing out a thin, curved line scratched into the surface. “Do you see these teeth marks?” He asked.

“Don’t tell me,” Jack swallowed. “Human?”

“Human-shaped doesn’t always mean human,” Koz tossed the bones away. “I still don’t know what it is though.”

He stood, his stomach churning from the stench as he thought aloud. “It definitely took a few bites out of him, but that doesn’t mean it killed him. A scavenger would be no threat to us. But it might’ve killed and eaten him--even then, depending what it is, it might be no threat. Some creatures are driven by anger or revenge.”

“Basically you have no idea if we should be scared or not?” Jack asked.

Koz frowned. “Better safe than sorry,” he said. “We’ll keep on our toes regardless.” He started walking away from the scene. “I want to go see Mr. Qwerty and ask if any similar attacks have been reported nearby.”

Just like that, Koz realized, his sense of purpose had returned and the boredom and frustration of the past few days fell away. “Does Burgess have an electronics store?”

“What? We have a Walmart? Maybe there’s something at the mall. Why?”

Koz nodded. A Walmart would do just fine. “I’ve realized things will be significantly easier if we have a computer.”

Jack stopped dead. “Are you serious?”

“Yes?” Koz said, completely bewildered.

Jack’s face crumpled and for a split second, Koz thought he was going to cry, but then instead his face split into a huge smile. “Thank God! I’ve been so bored! Can we get some DVDs too?”

“I need the computer for hunting purposes,” Koz said.

Jack’s face fell and Koz nearly laughed at how disappointed he was. “We’ll get a TV too,” he said.

Jack crowed again. “Let’s make a party out of it,” he said, “and get a coffee maker to go with it.”

“Now we’re on the same page!” Koz chuckled. He could feel a sense of life returning to him after these past few days; a lightness seemed to pour into him and while he should have felt dread at the thought of an unknown threat, instead he felt the first rays of hope.

*

Jack was the happiest Koz had seen him in weeks. Apparently it didn’t take much to lift his spirits, just a television, coffee maker, a DVD box set of the first season of Teen Wolf, and Chinese take-out. The computer might have been added to this lineup if it weren’t for one thing; they didn’t have internet.

“Dang,” Jack said through a mouth-full of take-out. Koz glared at his new computer’s screen. “At least we can play Solitaire?”

“Laugh all you like,” Koz said icily. “We don’t have the cable set up either.” He nodded toward the small TV set they’d bought.

“But it’ll still play DVDs.” Jack said with a triumphant smirk.

Koz grumbled as he powered down the laptop. “I’m not even sure we can get television or cable out here. I mean, we couldn’t get someone to come so far out--no one is supposed to live out here.”

Jack chewed thoughtfully. “Then how come we’ve got water and electricity?”

Koz frowned. That was a good question. Jack tipped the container of mushu pork toward him, eyebrows raised. He gratefully accepted it, although he frowned when the utensils handed to him were chopsticks. Jack had a good point and he brought up a question that had long been on Koz’s mind.

“I’m not sure how we have water and power,” he said, trying to pick up some greasy and absolutely heavenly smelling pork with his clumsy chopstick skills. “If John was the cabin owner and he died and hasn’t been paying his bills, presumably the city would’ve shut down his amenities.”

Jack swallowed half of a pot-sticker. “Where would his bills even go? It’s not like we get mail out here.”

“He could have used a P.O. box,” Koz said, pointedly ignoring the look on Jack’s face when a slice of carrot slipped free from his chopsticks and landed on the table. “But we are pretty out of the way . . .” He frowned, setting the carton and utensils on the table as he looked around the cabin. “We’re in a bloody state park, surely there aren’t any power lines out here?”

“Maybe we could look after dinner?” Jack suggested, wolfing down another dumpling.

“We might have to,” Koz said with a sigh. “But first, pass me a fork.”

*

There were no cables along the side of the cabin--nor pipes. But there had to be some sort of access area or fuse box! The less Koz found, the more sure he was that they weren’t connected to a grid. Eventually the setting sun forced them inside. Koz didn’t know what had killed the camper and he didn’t want to find out by running into it.

Koz wasn’t pouting per se, but he was certainly disappointed that his hunt had been cut short. He slumped on the bed, his shoulders wedged between the two corners of the wall, watching off hand as Jack scurried around the room, trying to set up the television so they could have a ‘movie night’.

Jack’s bare feet padded across the floor and Koz dimly noticed the sound striking a deeper beat as he walked across the floor panel where John had built his gun stash (now full of Koz’s weapons).

The boy walked over to the wall near the fridge, trying to find an outlet, when Koz realized his steps were making that same, deep sound.

He sat up, straining his hearing. He could hear the sharp squeak of Jack’s bare feet almost imperceptibly sticking to the cabin floor, coming free again, then pressing down and then, the tiniest of echoes going beneath the floor.

Koz stood up. Jack glanced toward him, confused as the older man came at him quickly. “Woah, what--” Jack took several steps back as Koz knelt on the floor and started rapping on the boards with his knuckle, listening to the echo.

Jack must have heard it too, for he fell silent and dropped down next to Koz. “Another trap door?” He asked just as Koz’s searching fingers found the seam and pulled the hidden door up and open.

He and Jack took a moment to stare in mutual surprise. The opening led to a large, dark hole. Jack hopped up and went searching for a torch. Koz didn’t need one, but he stood as well. From what he could see, the sides of the hole were uneven, it was more like a very wide crack--not man-made, perhaps part of a cave. He went to the bed and pulled his handgun out from under the mattress, then took the torch from Jack.

Koz lowered himself down the hole. It wasn’t very deep, but it did lead off away from the cabin. The air was cool and smelled like wet stone, he could hear the distant rush of running water. “It’s a cave,” Koz spoke up toward Jack, looking around himself. The space beneath the cabin was small, the size of a pantry, but at the back he could see a thin gap leading somewhere else.

“Koz?” Jack’s voice resounded hollowly, but it didn’t echo. The room beneath the cabin was too narrow for any real vibrations.

Koz turned to look up at him and spotted something he hadn’t when he was sliding down. A series of thick cords trailed from the space just under the cabin and lead down to the cave floor, fastened to the wall and heading out the narrow crack into the cave’s next room.

“Koz?” Jack whined.

“You stay there,” Koz said, “I’ll go check this out.”

“Koz, maybe you should wait until day time?”

Koz looked up at the younger boy with a teasing grin. “All the night-hunters are out hunting things--it’ll be more dangerous during the day.”

Jack groaned, his lip jutting out in a pout. “This is the plot of too many horror movies for my liking, Koz!”

“Then stay there,” Koz said.

“The person who’s too scared and stays behind always gets ganked!”

Koz snorted. “Then come with me.”

“I’ll also get ganked if I go with,” Jack said glumly. Frowning as his eyes roved around the space. “Did you forget that we found an unexplained corpse this morning? What if the thing that did it lives down there?”

“Do you really think we’ll be safe just because we put a few pieces of wood between our home and that monster?”

There was a pause and then Jack turned around and started climbing down. He landed beside Koz and shot him a fierce scowl. “If we die, I’m going to be pissed.”

“Where’s your sense of fun?”

“That line is literally said in every horror movie!”

Koz headed toward the narrow crack. He was smiling, but he still had his gun trained forward as he held the light at eye level. He tried to look through the crack before he attempted sliding through, but unlike the area beneath the cabin where there was light coming down through the trapdoor, beyond the crack there was only darkness.

The sound of water was much louder, that much he knew. Koz put the flashlight between his teeth to free up one of his hands as he squeezed his way through the narrow cleft, trying not to step on wires as he did.

As soon as he was on the other side he took up his torch once more and took a good look around. The ceiling was so low he had to stoop and an underground river flowed rapidly not two feet from where he stood. To his left, the river ran on, bending away out of sight. To his right was a large structure that he admittedly mistook for something alive and nearly shot until he realized what it was.

He peaked through the opening. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve found where we’re getting our electricity.”

Jack had an easier time getting through the opening. As soon as he stepped through, Koz revealed his findings with a flourish.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

“A water wheel,” Koz said, kneeling to examine the generator John had apparently jerry-rigged to the wheel. “This is how we’ve been getting our electricity.” He shone his light higher, illuminating a set of pipes coming down from above the wheel and disappearing behind it. “I think that’s our water.”

He and Jack pressed themselves to the wall to see the pipes running behind the water wheel, leading down into a small hole heading deeper underground.

“So we’ve been using well-water.” Jack summarized. “No wonder it tasted kind of funny.” He looked around. “I didn’t know there were caves like this in this forest,” he said.

“There’s one that campers can go to,” Koz said. “That’s by Claussen though. Used to take Sera-- ahem . . . went there a few times.” Remembering the field trips he’d chaperoned with Seraphina felt like a stab in the chest. He swallowed hard. “This might be connected to that one.”

Jack looked down the other end. “So all those nights I spent hiding from the Bennett’s I could’ve just walked out?” His voice was surprisingly thick.

“More likely you would’ve gotten lost and died in the dark,” Koz said with more force than he intended. He relented, putting a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”

“Come on,” Koz said. “Let’s go have our movie night. I’m very excited to finally watch Teen Wolf.”

Jack let out a wet laugh and cleared his throat. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and they both turned back to return to the cabin above.

***

In the end, it took several days to get internet and cable at the cabin--a process which involved getting a P.O. box (so they could get their bills), getting two disposable cell phones (so they could call-in and harass the cable company with questions), several bribes to smooth things over about the many lies they were having to tell, and then a do-it yourself installation. Jack didn’t mind that part so much since it involved Koz attempting to climb onto the roof and falling on his ass several times.

Turned out, having internet wasn’t as convenient as either of them had previously thought. There were too many minute details about the attack that Koz didn’t know. Apparently even though he knew it was human-shaped and climbed trees, whether it climbed the tree because it lived there, hunted from there, or was retreating up there from some other animal all pointed to different creatures.

Then Jack got to listen bemusedly as Koz went on a tarrade about how this wouldn’t be half as much trouble if they were anywhere but America--where all the immigrants had--by accident or on purpose--brought along all sorts of foreign monsters to add to the native population so America’s supernatural creature population was as diverse as its human one.

Jack was frustrated too, though for different reasons. He’d spent his internet time reading Sterek fanfiction while Koz grumpily watched Teen Wolf (pretending he didn’t care about it even though he paid rapt attention). He was halfway through a very steamy alpha/omega fic before he realized that he now lived in a one room cabin with a roommate who would know exactly what he was doing if he snuck off to the bathroom to jerk off.

This frustration was only compounded on by his growing awareness that--for better or worse--he was probably going to spend the rest of his life with Koz. At least that’s the way things seemed to be headed. Even with all the drama and the trying to kill Jack and then lying about it, Jack had to admit it: he was definitely attracted to Koz, and forever was a time made even longer when you had to tiptoe around your sexual attraction to someone you were with constantly. This, coupled with the thought that, if asked, he wasn’t entirely sure Koz would refuse to suck him off, led to a very frustrating evening indeed.

Jack was still feeling off his game the next day as he and Koz returned to their usual routine of patrolling the forest. They kept an eye out for any sign of their mystery monster, but Jack was quickly discovering he was at a disadvantage here--Koz had an advanced sense of smell that Jack had yet to develop. He was still stuck on migraine-inducing noise levels, although he hadn’t had another sensory attack for a while now.

As it was, Jack wasn’t really paying attention on their walk, but instead was trying to think of a non-awkward way to tell Koz they needed to come up with a roommate’s signal for ‘gonna masturbate, please give privacy’ when Koz stopped dead in his tracks.

Jack nearly walked into him, then froze himself, looking around wildly up at the trees.

“Is it the monster?” He asked, voice low.

Koz shook his head minutely, his jaw setting in a way that Jack was beginning to recognize as his ‘about to unleash hell’ face. He listened intently and Jack followed his lead, focusing his hearing. He felt a mix of dysphoria and pride as he successfully extended his hearing to catch far off sounds.

What he found was mostly nonsensical. The forest was alive and living things made noise. The wind sent the leaves rustling and fluttering to the ground. Birds flapped their wings and chirped, late-season insects buzzed and clicked through the underbrush. All manner of animals scurried and trotted and slithered, their movements only slightly covering the sounds of their beating hearts and breathing. Dead leaves and twigs cracked and crunched; most were too far scattered to mark anything more than the path of squirrels or chipmunks. But then . . . footsteps. Whoever it was, they were bumbling and panting just enough that Jack wasn’t too afraid, but still he and Koz should probably avoid them.

Koz turned to him, his eyes taking in Jack’s cocked head and thoughtful expression. “You heard that?” He asked quietly.

Jack nodded. “Are they human?” He asked.

Koz frowned. “I can’t tell, the wind’s not blowing the right direction.”

Jack felt the breeze ruffle his hair gently and turned his face into it. They were lucky, the footsteps he’d heard were coming from the north, the wind was coming from the west. They couldn’t smell the strangers, but if the strangers were more than simple humans, they wouldn’t be able to smell Jack and Koz either.

“What do we do?” Jack asked quietly.

Koz pulled one of his guns from its holster and handed it to Jack. Jack took it with only a little hesitation. He wasn’t comfortable carrying a weapon yet, but it was still the middle of the day; he couldn’t rely on transforming if things got messy.

“Stay at my side,” Koz said. “Don’t raise your gun unless I do and don’t fire unless I tell you to. I’m going to see if I can catch a scent. If they are wolves, we might be able to surprise and subdue them without you having to fire a shot.”

Jack nodded. He’d like that.

Koz lead the way, heading eastward and keeping low and quiet. Jack followed suit. He knew if something tipped off the strangers to their location they could end up in deep water, so he tried to do as Koz did, taking slow, careful steps and occasionally straining his hearing to better locate their targets.

Luckily, the strangers were headed southward, and they soon came parallel to the waiting hunters. The wind blew their scent toward them and Koz grimaced. Jack raised his eyebrows in a silent question and Koz gave him a stern nod, his face dark. Werewolves.

They crouched down into the brush and Koz leaned forward and whispered into Jack’s ear. “I’m going to confront them, stay back until I tell you to come out.”

They crept after the strange wolves for a few yards farther. Jack felt a sense of surrealism creep over him. He’d once been the one unknowingly stalked, it felt strange now that the situation was reversed. They didn’t stay hidden for long though. The three strangers stopped, and Jack and Koz approached, close enough that they could catch their conversation without stretching his hearing.

“This forest is a lot bigger than I thought,” said a young female voice.

“Yes,” said another voice--this one definitely male, with the soft croaky, creakiness of a senior. “It’ll be harder to find them than I originally thought.” He sighed. “I hope this turns out all right.”

The girl chimed in quickly. “Jamie said they’d welcome us. We have to have faith--” she trailed off as if something had caught her attention. For a moment, Koz and Jack were frozen still, terrified that they’d been caught, but then she spoke again. “If they won’t let you join their pack, Nightlight, I’ll--I’ll spit on them!”

There was a snort of laughter--too youthful for the man, too deep to be the girl. The third stranger.

Koz nudged Jack and jerked his head up to signal his intentions. Jack nodded, his hands shaking on the borrowed weapon in his hands.

Koz stood up, gun raised. Jack stood behind him, raising his weapon as well.

“Freeze!” Koz barked.

Jack’s eyebrows rose as he saw their three targets. One was an old man in his late sixties at least. The other two were teenagers, probably fifteen or sixteen. None of them froze.

Instead, both teenagers put their hands in the air, both obviously startled. The old man flung his hands in the air, sending the map he’d been holding flying. “We surrender!” He nearly shrieked in fright. He lifted the back of his jacket and turned around to show where his scrawny back dipped into his corduroy pants. “Not armed!” He declared before he fell to his knobby knees. He lay on the ground, putting his hands on his head. “We are surrendering peacefully!”

The rest of them didn’t seem to know what to do with this. Jack--who was seriously trying not to laugh--looked to Koz, who just seemed confused. The teenaged boy looked alarmed and slightly stoned. The girl just seemed embarrassed.

“Ombic, how many times have you been arrested?” She asked, tone both loving and exasperated.

The old man--Ombric--looked up at her from under the rim of a straw pork-pie hat. He frowned. “I thought we were all going to drop down . . .” he said, “now this looks awkward.”

“You can stand,” Koz said. “But no sudden moves.”

“Actually I can’t stand,” Ombric said. “Bad back. I can get going just fine but once I stop it takes a lot to get me up and about again.”

“Help him up,” Koz ordered the boy.

The young man blinked owlishly in reply and the girl cast him an anxious glance before kneeling down to help the old man up.

Jack tried not to let his thoughts show on his face--they were trying to be intimidating after all--but he was finding it hard to see the three of them as a threat. Ombric was wearing that silly old man hat, a sweater vest, and a tweed jacket for Christ’s sake. He looked like a Mary Poppin’s character. The old man finally stood and promptly started brushing leaves out of his beard. Jack half expected him to pull hard candies from his pocket and offer them some, but instead, he pulled out a hanky and dabbed at his forehead under his hat.

The girl, meanwhile, had long, curly brown hair held away from her face by a plain headband. She wore plain jeans, flats, and a cream, knit sweater. She reminded Jack of the bookish but out-going sort of girls he knew from school--the sort who always ran for class council and weren’t popular enough to make president, but were universally trusted across the school and ended up as treasurer or secretary.

The boy was a bit of an enigma. His clothes seemed too big for him, as though he’d recently dropped a lot of weight. His hair was white--seemingly naturally. His green eyes seemed to have trouble focusing on anything. At first Jack had thought he was high, but now he could see the edge of a large gauze bandage hiding under the boy’s bangs.

“My name is Ombric,” said the old man. “This is Katherine and Nightlight--ahem, erm--Nick.” He tucked his handkerchief away. “We were hoping you might offer us sanctuary.”

All at once the bandage and Nightlight’s coloring tipped Jack off. The trust he’d been slowly willing to extend to the three vanished into mist.

“You’re the wolves that attacked my sister!” He snarled.

Katherine and Ombric flinched--Nightlight or Nick or whatever he was called--merely blinked.

Jack remembered him, the white pup who’d snapped at his sister’s heels until the store clerk put a bullet through his skull. It wasn’t a silver bullet though--and Koz had said werewolves could survive even a headshot if it wasn’t silver.

“We didn’t have a choice!” Katherine pleaded, but Ombric cut her off.

“Perhaps we could sit and talk,” he said.

Jack felt his hackles raise and then Koz spoke. “I agree.”

Jack started as Koz lowered his weapon. “Koz?”

Koz turned to him, a frown on his face. “Manny turned them out,” he said. Behind him, Ombric’s shoulders slumped and Katherine’s frown turned nearly tearful. “He mentioned that he’d abandoned a lieutenant I shot in the head--why would it be any different for an initiate?”

“Exactly,” Ombric said, sounding much too sad about it for Jack’s tastes. “We just want to talk now. Please.”

Koz offered Jack a placating look. Jack growled. “Fine.”

They sat in the little clearing where the three exiles had come to rest. There was a fallen tree across the clearing where Ombric sat, dabbing at his forehead anxiously. Koz sat just a few feet away, the only sign he wasn’t completely relaxed was that he still had his hand on his gun, which he’d rested on his thigh. 

Nightlight plopped down on the ground and looked between the four of them as if he’d already forgotten who they all were. Katherine stood just beside him, eyes flitting from Koz to Jack and back again, wariness apparent in her tense posture and quick movements. She nearly jumped when Nightlight pulled on her pant leg and gestured for her to sit beside him. She glanced up at Jack, who was watching the exchange, before hesitantly crouching beside the boy. 

Jack remained standing. He trusted Koz, but he wouldn’t sit with these people. He glared at each of them in turn. Katherine avoided his eye, while Nightlight watched the newcomers with unabashed curiosity, his gaze occasionally shifting out of focus. 

Ombric remained oblivious. “It’s just as you said,” he started. “The Czar--”

“He makes you call him ‘czar’?” Jack cut in.

“Oh,” Ombric waved his hand. “He always insisted everyone call him Manny--said we were all family. But of course, we don’t think of him as family anymore.” He turned back to Koz. “The czar is selective about who joins the troupe. He likes to act like he’s a benevolent leader, offering a free home to stray lycans, but really he’s just a big knot of ego with a victim complex.”

Jack snorted. He got the feeling this was a complaint that had been repeated many times.

“Anyone over the age of fifteen has to succeed at an initiation test,” Ombric continued. “He says it’s a test of loyalty, and to some extent it is, but it’s also a test to see our skills and how far we’re willing to push ourselves for him. Depending on how well you do determines what sort of ranking you receive once you’re in. ‘Rankings’ determines how much food and supplies you get. If you fail the initiation or fall too far in the rankings, you’re out.” He sighed. “Some--like Sophie and Jamie Bennett--get several chances because the czar likes them.”

“‘Likes them’?” Koz quirked an eyebrow.

“Sophie hangs on to every word he says!” Katherine said, her tone laced with disgust. “So then he gives her and Jamie special treatment and that just makes her like him even more--”

“If it’s one thing the czar is good at, it’s grooming loyalty. To the point that his followers are more than willing to overlook his transgressions.” Ombric sighed again. “Miss Bennett agreed whole-heartedly that Nightlight no longer belonged with the troupe. So did most of the others.”

“What about Jamie?” Jack asked.

“He told us to find you,” Katherine said, wrapping her arms around herself. “He said you offered him a place in your pack if he ever left the troupe.”

“I did . . .” Jack said at length. He didn’t know if he wanted to extend that invitation to the wolves who’d tried to kill his sister though.

“So the two of you decided to leave with him?” Koz nodded toward Nightlight.

“Of course.” Katherine looked over to the young man, her eyes speaking volumes of her love and pity for the boy.

Ombric nodded, expression morose. “I’ve been looking after these two for a long time,” he said. “I didn’t care much for the czar before, but when he turned his back on Nightlight--that was the last straw.”

“And he doesn’t mind you leaving?” Koz asked.

Ombric shook his head. “He might not have let me go if he hadn’t got another doctor. There are some he might not let leave . . . If Nightlight were well, he’d want to keep him.” His eyes flitted to Jack. “He likes having other white wolves around.”

Jack shifted uncomfortably. “Do I want to know why?”

“He says because they’re pretty.”

Jack blanched, but Ombric held up his hands. “I don’t think that’s the real reason,” he said. “I’ve been with the troupe a long while and seen enough white wolves get shot or even killed to realize that he keeps so many around him in order to use them as decoys.”

“Ah . . .” Koz said thoughtfully. “That’s deviously clever. Most hunters in these parts have heard of the White Wolf--but not as many know he’s albino--or would be discerning enough to check each white wolf they saw for red eyes and a pink nose.”

“Exactly.” Ombric nodded.

“If he’s such a big asshole--why follow him?” Jack asked.

“Katherine was raised in Manny’s pack. Nightlight was abandoned by his human family. Luckily we found him before some hunters could.” Ombric frowned. “I suppose that’s the real reason I started following Manny. His pack is large enough--his net wide enough--that he manages to gather all the confused lycans who’d probably end up killed otherwise.” His frown deepened. “But he tends to absorb or destroy other packs that try the same thing. I can’t guarantee he won’t come after your pack if you let us join--he might see you as a threat.”

“We aren’t a pack,” Koz said quickly. “We’re just . . . two people.”

Ombric waved a hand as if to dismiss this. “Most werewolf packs are only two or three strong.”

Koz looked like he was going to argue the point, but Jack interrupted. “So you know a lot of werewolves?” He asked. “Good werewolves?”

Ombric blinked in surprise. “Of course!” He said, “We’re afflicted humans! And just like humans we have our good and bad!” He seemed ruffled, almost offended. He looked at Koz, seeking something.

Koz gazed back at him evenly. “Sorry,” he said, “but I haven’t met many good werewolves.”

“Of course you haven’t!” Katherine snapped, face flushing. “You’re a hunter! Even if you ran into a good lycan, they probably wouldn’t be good to you!”

“There are many perfectly decent people amongst Manny’s troupe,” Ombric said, “they’re just . . . they’re frightened and angry and it makes them stupid.”

“‘Perfectly decent’ like you?” Jack spat. “You tried to kill my sister!”

“We weren’t going to kill her, we were supposed to turn her!” Katherine said, her voice raising in volume.

“Sure--ruining her life so she’d have no choice but to join your band of psychopaths--that’s so ‘decent’ of you!”

“I was going to lose my whole family if I didn’t do it!” Katherine said.

Jack threw his arms out. “You lost them anyway!”

Koz tugged at his wrist and pulled his hand down. His expression was sympathetic and Jack felt himself shrink under the calm surety of his touch.

Katherine was glaring daggers at him, her eyes misty and the corner of her lips trembling in a way that threatened imminent tears. Nightlight gently touched her hand, cocking his head to the side in confusion. She blinked rapidly to clear her eyes as she turned to look at him.

“I can tell you the route Manny will take,” Ombric offered. “You can tell your hunting friends.”

Katherine gasped. “Ombric no--they’ll kill everyone! Jamie and Sophie and Fog and--”

“I don’t want to turn my back on them, but they’ve already turned their backs on us, Katherine.” He held his hands out, defenseless before Koz’s scrutinizing gaze. “We just need a safe place to stay where Nightlight can recuperate. Someplace where we won’t draw unwanted attention during the full moon.”

Koz was quiet a long moment. Jack wasn’t sure which of Ombric’s points was tugging at him the most, but he suspected it was Ombric’s mention of the full moon. Even if Koz didn’t care one bit for the three ex-troupe members, he cared if they were a danger to others.

“How do you know what route Manny will take?” Koz said. “If he had a predictable pattern, we’d have figured it out already.”

Ombric nodded quickly. “It’s not set,” he said. “He’ll often change course if he hears about a new wolf or a particularly troublesome hunter, but I know some cities he’ll definitely visit. You see, he always waits a few years after a werewolf refuses to join him, then he returns and asks again.”

“‘A few years’?” Koz asked. “You mean you won’t know where he’ll be for a few years?”

“No, no!” Ombric reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, leather bound journal absolutely stuffed with stray papers and so ratty and old it was held together with a rubber band. “I’ve been going behind Manny’s back for ten years now--I’ve got contact information for almost every werewolf we’ve met over that time. My list is even better than Manny’s! His is just a name and a city--I have up-to-date addresses and contacts and emergency contacts--”

“Why?” Koz asked incredulously.

“Oh! Well, Manny thinks isolating them will make them more likely to join him when he returns.”

“So you keep in contact so they won’t feel isolated and are less likely to join?”

“Well,” Ombric shifted. “Sort of. We certainly do that for the young people. The adults however . . . well, it’s also so that I can send them my experiments and test the results.”

“‘Experiments’?” Koz shifted forward, interested.

“Yes!” Ombric nodded rapidly, clearly trying to mask his excitement. “That’s another thing I wanted to tell you about--I’m developing a cure.”


	2. Shopping in Burgess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ombric.” Katherine made a face that practically screamed ‘I love you, but please shut up!’
> 
> Jack glanced toward Koz and saw he was looking at the two with a sort of fond amusement that had no place being directed toward these strangers. Then he remembered that Koz had a teenage daughter. Katherine at that moment was embodying all teenagers everywhere when faced with embarrassing parents. It wasn’t that Jack wasn’t sympathetic to why this plucked at Koz’s heart strings, but he had a sneaking suspicion it might cloud his judgement.
> 
> “All right,” Koz said. “If it will help you make your cure, you can stay here.”
> 
> Jack bit his lip. Like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays everybody!

If Ombric, Katherine, or Nightlight were trying to trick them somehow, then they were very good actors, Jack thought. But even if they were telling the truth and Manny had given them the boot, it didn’t make everything okay. He kept a close eye on them as they walked back to the cabin.

Regardless of their intent, they definitely weren’t lying about Nightlight. He didn’t speak, barely understood when he was spoken to, and had a great amount of trouble walking through the trees without assistance. As soon as they got to the cabin he made his way to their small kitchen table, sat, and lay his head down, seemingly falling straight asleep.

Ombric took the other seat as Katherine took a spot behind him, eyeing Koz and Jack warily. Koz set a pot of water to boil in the coffee machine, taking out a box of teabags. He leaned against the kitchen counter and Jack joined him, putting Koz between him and the three strangers.

The water began to boil as Ombric dabbed his forehead and began: “I started working on a cure just after I was bitten. At first I tried to infect rats with lycanthropy to generate subjects for further testing , but the experiments that followed found they were completely unaffected--they had no response to the bite. However, based on basic human cellular functions and systemic responses, I had no response to the bite either. There was no physiological change in cellular structures or processes which would explain the increase in sensory perception or the ability to transform into an entirely different species. I was unable to prove that anything had changed physiologically from before the bite to after. There is no scientific evidence that lycanthropy is real..” He chuckled. “Magic is science we don’t yet understand,” he said, “and I don’t understand this illness. Therefore, it is magic.”

“So . . . you don’t have any animal test subjects, so you’ve been using other wolves,” Koz spoke evenly, but there was an edge to his tone that Jack caught and Katherine too, judging by the self-conscious way she shifted in her seat. 

Ombric remained oblivious, excitedly continuing: “That’s what I do now, but in the beginning it was just me. I learned a lot about lycanthropic resilience in those early days--testing the limits of my healing abilities and seeing how much of lycan lore is really true. For example: ingesting trace amounts of arsenic has no effect on lycans--larger doses cause nothing but stomach irritation!”

“Yes. I’ve ah . . . experimented with the healing factor as well,” Koz said, trying to move the man along. 

It didn’t escape Jack’s notice what Koz’s ‘experiments’ implied. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at a spot on the floor, trying not to think that Ombric’s experiments might have started for the same reasons as Koz’s. If he felt pity for them it would be more difficult to mistrust them. 

“I also found that wolfsbane, a commonly-found poison, causes rather extreme reactions in lycans, elevated symptoms compared to the typical assortment of reactions humans encounter with the toxin,” Ombric continued, oblivious to Koz’s rushing. “But I found that while it is extremely unpleasant--wolfsbane is not lethal.”

Koz quirked an eyebrow, but must have decided not to comment for fear of spurring him on further.

“I administered wolfsbane to myself in varying dosages but as you can obviously see I didn’t die. The symptoms must be managed of course, but other than that . . . however, I did notice something strange! You see, before I was bitten, my eyesight was very poor; I was legally blind in fact. After I contracted the illness, my eyesight improved drastically, enough so that I no longer required glasses! However, after I started the wolfsbane trials, I noticed my eyesight steadily growing worse again.” He tapped his glasses. “I still use myself as a guinea pig more often than I should--but I’ve found that if I stop, after some time my vision will improve again. What I’ve found from this is that by exposing myself to substances toxic to lycans--like wolfsbane--I can suppress the effects of lycanthropy.”

Koz leaned forward. “So you can stop the change? On a full moon?”

Jack’s heart rate picked up speed. It wasn’t quite the cure he’d imagined, but being able to control the change--to never fear losing control . . . He could go home! They both could.

“Oh, that journey has been an adventure in and of itself.”

Jack’s shoulders slumped. Ombric seemed more excited about the discovery process than the results and was determined to get them just as enthused. He opened his mouth to probe Ombric into getting on with it, but the coffee machine beeped. Koz turned suddenly to get to it and shot Jack a pointed look as he did. Jack got the message: indulge the old scientist just for a bit.

“Obviously controlling the change on the night of the full moon has always been the ultimate goal--but because I and all my assistants are lycans, I’m unable to accurately observe and document the results.”

“So you haven’t been able to control it during a full moon?” Jack said impatiently as Koz dropped tea bags into the coffee pot, expression carefully neutral.

“Well . . .” Ombric took off his glasses and polished them on his handkerchief. Jack could have screamed. Even Koz turned around expectantly. “Yes. That is, I’ve spent full moons in my human form. However, I usually was too ill to do accurate recordings. My focus often fell on relieving my symptoms.” He replaced his glasses and smiled. “But I’ve made a lot of breakthroughs. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I can create a viable treatment for the symptoms of lycanthropy.”

Jack slumped in his seat. “Sure . . .” He said, “‘Cause curing diseases is easy!”

“It certainly isn’t!” Ombric said, offended.

“Ombric, he was being sarcastic,” Katherine finally spoke up. She turned to Koz, not glancing Jack’s way. “Ombric’s been working on a cure since before I was born. The only thing that ever slowed him down was taking care of me.”

“Oh, you know I was happy to, darling.”

“I know,” Katherine said quickly before turning back to Koz. “You see, now that Nightlight’s injured and unable to take care of himself, he’s going to have to put his research on hold again to help him recover . . . which will take even longer if we’re homeless.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. He got what she was implying. Put them up or lessen their chance at a cure/treatment.

Ombric frowned. “Katherine you’re making this sound awfully like an ultimatum! I’ll have to put some items on hold, but it shouldn’t be too much trouble--”

“Ombric.” Katherine made a face that practically screamed ‘I love you, but please shut up!’

Jack glanced toward Koz and saw he was looking at the two with a sort of fond amusement that had no place being directed toward these strangers. Then he remembered that Koz had a teenage daughter. Katherine at that moment was embodying all teenagers everywhere when faced with embarrassing parents. It wasn’t that Jack wasn’t sympathetic to why this plucked at Koz’s heart strings, but he had a sneaking suspicion it might cloud his judgement.

“All right,” Koz said. “If it will help you make your cure, you can stay here.”

Jack bit his lip. Like that.

***

Having three strangers come into their home proved as difficult as Koz suspected. He was no fool, he didn’t trust these exiles one inch. This was part of what made sharing space with them so difficult. He wanted to talk to Jack privately, to tell him his thoughts and how they should proceed, but he didn’t want to leave the three alone.

Thankfully, Jack seemed to realize this and followed Koz’s lead. He didn’t try to pick any more fights, but he didn’t speak to the three of them for the entirety of the evening. When Koz offered to give up the room’s only bed to the three of them. Koz could tell Jack was unhappy, but he went along with it. It was hard not to acquiesce when your new roommates included a fragile old man and an injured boy. 

Koz didn’t trust them, but they certainly weren’t lying about Nightlight’s condition. His attention waivered in and out of reality and he seemed to have trouble sitting and standing. Unfortunately, so did Ombric, which left Katherine scurrying to help one up or down, then the other.

Pity prickled at him, but he reminded himself that these were some of Manny’s men. They’d tried to attack Jack’s sister. He could tell Jack was still internally raging and Koz couldn’t hold it against him. He would never forgive someone who intentionally tried to harm Seraphina. He’d nearly harmed her as a wolf and had attempted to kill himself because of it.

Using the logic that it would be easier to help them up from the bed than the floor, Katherine talked Ombric and Nightlight into sharing the bed. They squeezed together on the twin-sized mattress while Koz laid out extra blankets on the floor for Katherine. He and Jack would do without--but a quick word with Jack while the three discussed the bed situation had the plan set: neither of them were going to do much sleeping.

They took turns staying awake and keeping watch on their guests. They weren’t the only ones staying up though. Koz could tell by her breathing that Katherine spent most of the night awake. She was the most able-bodied of the three of them, he supposed she thought herself responsible and was staying up to insure Jack and Koz didn’t try anything. It made for a rough night.

The next day, Jack and Koz’s usual routine was disturbed by the presence of their three new roommates. The bathroom-to-users ratio became painfully obvious. Naturally, the three had been traveling non-stop ever since Nightlight had become mobile again, so they all wanted to shower. They took turns in between eating--which of course, utterly demolished their supplies.

Koz opted out of taking a shower, preferring not to leave Jack alone in the company of questionable strangers, but Jack wasn’t so generous. Karma returned the favor though; the hot water ran out just as Jack’s turn came. He chose to opt out as well, but Koz could tell this upset to their usual routine only made the young man more resentful toward the newcomers.

Ombric drew a bath for Nightlight--still not yet willing to give him the independence of a shower. Katherine boiled water in the coffee maker to help heat the young man’s bath, then Ombric helped Nightlight into the tub, leaving the bathroom door halfway open so he could keep an eye on Katherine--the only sign he’d given thus far that he didn’t trust Koz and Jack.

It was then that Koz looked up at the clock and realized it was getting on noon.

“All right,” Koz said. “I think we should come up with a plan. Jack and I would very much like to get Ombric back to work on making a cure . . . Ombric, can you hear me?”

Ombric peaked his head through the half-open door. “Yes, sir!”

“How should we proceed?” Koz asked. “What do you need?”

Ombric frowned thoughtfully. “I’ll have to make a list,” he said. “But it may take a while regardless, we don’t have much money.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Koz said, “I’ve got money. The hunters have a fund of sorts. It may not be for hunting per se, but I figure putting some of those funds toward finding a cure for lycanthropy counts toward achieving their goals.”

Ombric smiled. “Oh, how wonderful! I’m not used to having funding. We could order some equipment then. I need a microscope, bunsen burner, beakers, a mortar and pestle, etcetera etcetera. I’ll also need distilled water, wolfsbane, mountain ash leaves . . .” He blinked, eyes glazing over as his thoughts turned inward. “Maybe . . . garlic . . . have I had garlic since . . .? Hmmmm . . . holy water? Oh!” He yelped and turned around suddenly. “Nightlight don’t move, let me get you a towel!”

From the kitchen table, Katherine, Koz, and Jack could see little more than the bathroom sink and Ombric’s tiny foot stretching to kick the door closed. “Katherine, avert your eyes!” He cried.

Katherine let out a fondly exasperated sigh.

“There’s a wolfsbane patch not far from here,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair with arms cross. “We can get garlic at the store.”

“I’ve got holy water already stocked,” Koz said from across the table. “I don’t know about mountain ash leaves. I’ll ask around for where we might find one growing.” He pursed his lips. “The lab equipment might be trickier. We’ll have to ship it to our P.O. box and it’ll take a while.”

Katherine cleared her throat. She was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms tight across her chest. She freed one hand to tuck her damp, chestnut brown hair behind her ear. “The last time we needed some equipment,” she said. “We sort of just . . . took it from the local high school . . . “ She flushed and looked down at her shoes.

Koz almost laughed. “We aren’t above a little thievery,” he admitted.

“I actually know a way into Burgess High,” Jack said with false casualness. “There’s a window in the boy’s locker room that doesn’t close all the way.”

Koz quirked an eyebrow and nodded. “We’ll do our shopping in Burgess then.” He frowned as he remembered Jack was a missing person still. Burgess wasn’t a large town, there were potentially a lot of people that might recognize the boy.

“You may have to stay in the car,” he told Jack. “It wouldn’t do for people to recognize you.” He turned as Ombric and a freshly dressed Nightlight came out of the bathroom. 

Katherine picked up her hair brush. “C’mere, Night, I’ll comb your hair for you.”

Nightlight scowled and took the brush from her. He combed his hair in quick, angry jerks, his movements clumsy and rough.

Koz spared a glance at Katherine in time to catch her just before she managed to mask her surprise and hurt. He looked away before she could notice his gaze. He watched as Nightlight finished flattening his damp, silvery locks. “Maybe both of you should stay in the car,” he said. “There aren’t too many lanky, white-haired teens around these parts. If someone mistook you for Jack we could end up in quite a mess.”

Nightlight nodded, his eyes only half focused.

Jack sighed. “All right,” he said. “Lead the way, captain.”

*

Koz had forgotten how long the car ride to Burgess was. The five of them sat in awkward silence for the first few minutes until Koz cracked and turned on the radio.

Ombric’s solution to resolving tension was to hum along to all the songs and twiddle his thumbs. Occasionally out of the corner of Koz’s eye he’d see the man pull his notebook from his pocket and jot down an idea, but otherwise he seemed quite content to stare off into space.

Every now and then Koz would glance in the rear-view mirror to see how Jack was doing.

Katherine and Nightlight had taken the two middle seats of the old minivan, with Nightlight’s backpack on the floor between them. Jack had taken the van’s back seat, sitting in the middle so he could glare at Katherine and Nightlight equally.

Koz looked back at the road as Katherine pulled a large book from Nightlight’s bag. A moment later she spoke.

“You have to practice Nini or how will you learn? C’mon, I’ll practice with you.” He heard the scratch of paper against paper as Katherine cracked the book open on her lap.

Koz snuck a look in the rearview mirror to see Katherine flicking through the pages, occasionally sneaking concerned and confused glances toward Nightlight. The boy sat slumped in his seat, arms crossed and a frown on his face as he pointedly looked out the window.

Ombric noticed his gaze. “Nightlight’s still having trouble talking and writing,” Ombric said. “So we’re all going through a crash course in Sign Language.”

“I see,” Koz said, focusing on the road once more.

Ombric turned his head around. “You don’t need to practice if you don’t want to, Nightlight,” he said. “If you and Katherine get better at it than me, then you could have a ton of conversations that I couldn’t understand!”

Ombric sat back in his seat, but tilted his head slightly to look back through the rearview mirror. Koz followed his lead.

Nearly immediately, Nightlight uncrossed his arms and turned to look at the book in Katherine’s lap.

Koz and Ombric shared a look before Koz remembered he was supposed to be keeping his distance from the exiles, not bonding over parenting tricks.

Behind them, Katherine read the meaning of words aloud while signing them, Nightlight mimicking her gracelessly. They spent a few minutes like that--the dull sounds of the radio and Ombric’s humming broken occasionally by Katherine’s voice or the scratch of a turning page.

“I want.” Katherine read. The soft rustle of her and Nightlight’s sleeves were the only indicator of their activities as Koz kept his eyes on the road.

“Uh . . .” Jack’s voice was quiet coming all the way from the back. “Actually it’s like this.” There was a quiet moment as he demonstrated the sign. “You move your hands toward yourself because you want the thing you want to come to you.”

Koz glanced back to see Jack sign--correctly--as he spoke: “Do you . . .” He paused and Koz could tell he was struggling with whether or not he wanted to keep talking to them. Koz was reminded of when Jack had still been angry with him. “Do you know your ABC’s?”

Koz’s eyebrows rose. As far as he knew there wasn’t a large Deaf community in Burgess and signing wasn’t something a lot of people knew. He’d picked it up from Sandy, but how did Jack know it? He felt a flicker of fondness. Jack always managed to surprise him and he quite liked it.

The three in the back were practicing the alphabet, with Jack interjecting with pointers. “Here’s a trick to remember the difference between ‘P’ and ‘Q’: you make a your two fingers like that . . . and those are the legs and you put your thumb in the middle and that’s ‘P’, ‘cause that’s the ‘pee-pee’.”

Koz balked while Nightlight burst out laughing. ‘Well,’ Koz thought, shaking his head, ‘none of them would ever forget the difference between ‘P’ and ‘Q’ now.’

The drive went much smoother with Jack teaching his tips and tricks for memorizing signs--which eventually broke down into Jack teaching the two teens all the dirty words he knew (during which, Ombric hummed extra loud and pretended very much like he wasn’t overhearing his adoptive children learn the sign for ‘cunnilingus’.)

Sandy certainly hadn’t taught Koz that one.

*

By the time they reached Burgess it was well into the afternoon and they decided to get lunch. Koz was still hoping to keep Jack (and Nightlight) out of sight, so they go through the McDonald’s drive-thru, and then ate in the parking lot. It was a quiet meal, bordering on awkward but for the fact that everyone was eating and had an excuse not to talk. Koz glanced through the rearview mirror to keep an eye on how Jack was doing and spotted Nightlight struggling to get the straw through the lid of his drink.

“Oh, let me do that for you Night--” Katherine’s offer died on her tongue as Nightlight rounded on her, his green eyes bright in a ferocious glare.

There was an awkward pause where Katherine sat speechless and the rest of the car pretended not to be paying attention. Then Nightlight went back to trying to get his straw through the lid.

Free from the confines of his seat belt, Jack leaned far forward.

“Do you know the sign for ‘can I help you’?” He asked, squeezing his way between the two of them. He did the sign, explaining how when you ask a question, you have to adjust your facial expression as well. “And then to ask for help you do the opposite motion.” He demonstrated, then looked over to Nightlight. “Got it?”

Nightlight, having gotten his straw in, nodded and took a few sulky sips of his drink.

“Great,” Jack said. “Now if you need help, you know how to ask for it,” Jack said.

Koz caught the brief but meaningful glance Jack gave Katherine as he said this. She seemed to shrink in her seat, face reddening.

Before they left, the three newcomers all stepped inside to use the loo. For the first time since finding the three, Koz and Jack were alone.

It was cool out, but the sun was warm and it was hot enough in the car that Koz had rolled down the windows. Outside, sparrows scoured the parking lot, searching for stray french fries. Koz watched one hop across the restaurant’s empty play area. Behind him, Jack let out a sigh. “I think I got tricked into being nice,” he said.

“A side affect of being naturally friendly I think,” Koz said, turning in his seat to look at the boy behind him.

Jack was chewing his lip fretfully. “I just don’t wanna get played for a sucker again,” he said, picking at the loose threads at his knees.

“You can be friendly while not entirely trusting someone,” Koz said. “We just have to stay on our toes.”

“For how long though?” Jack asked slumping down into his seat. “I doubt Ombric will be able to make a cure in a few weeks and even if we can trust them, five people in one bedroom is going to get very old, very fast.”

“People can survive sharing a bedroom with four roommates.”

“Yeah, but it’s not enjoyable.”

Koz frowned. “I suppose we could look for a tent . . . that wouldn’t solve the ah . . . latrine issue though. And even if I don’t trust them, I wouldn’t really feel right making an old man and a boy recovering from brain damage sleep out in the elements.”

Jack tapped his fingers on his knees. “I mean . . . I agree with you but--even they probably don’t want to spend an indefinite amount of time with zero alone time. I mean, I like you Koz, but even I get tired of being around you 24/7.”

Koz let out a huff of a laugh. “For the record I do feel the same,” he said. He ran a thumb along the steering wheel in thought. “Maybe we should just ask them what they’d like to do.” He glanced toward Jack. “One way or the other, we’ll need to seek a more permanent solution if they’re going to stay for a long time.”

The three exiles in question appeared at the restaurant door and the point was dropped until after they’d gotten into the car and Koz began to pull out of the parking lot.

“So, Jack and I were discussing our sleeping arrangements,” Koz started, trying not to sound as awkward as he felt. “We were wondering if you’d thought on the matter.”

Ombric chuckled. “We were actually discussing something similar just a moment ago,” he admitted. “We were thinking that since we’re stealing lab equipment from a school, we may as well go the next step and see if we could acquire an RV.”

Koz didn’t see the correlation between these two things until Jack let out a short snicker. “Like in Breaking Bad?”

They reached a red light just in time for Koz to turn and see Ombric peering into the back seat. The old man crumpled his weathered features into what was probably supposed to be a fearsome grimace. “I am the one who knocks!” He snarled. This would’ve been much more impressive if he hadn’t let out a short giggle at the end. As it was, Nightlight burst out laughing and a quick glance showed Jack snorting into his hand.

***

Jack and Nightlight were left alone in the van while Koz, Ombric, and a hesitant Katherine went into the Burgess Walmart for supplies.

Jack felt conflicted. He didn’t want to forgive the three exiles so easily, especially since he and Koz weren’t sure if they could be trusted yet. Nightlight was already doing much better than the day before. He was more focused, better coordinated, and more energetic. Still, he was obviously struggling, and Jack would feel like an asshole if he didn’t try to help him. He justified it to himself that Nightlight’s injury and subsequent recovery were penance enough for what he’d done or tried to do to Emma.

Nightlight hesitantly fingerspelled words he wanted Jack to teach him, sometimes using his other hand to force his clumsy fingers to cooperate. Jack showed him the signs, demonstrating how to use them in sentences, and offering tips for how to remember them. They were so engrossed in this activity that they both jumped when the backseat door opened and Koz offered Jack a bundle of shopping bags.

‘Where-is-Katherine-and-Ombric?’ Nightlight signed haltingly.

Before Jack could think to translate, Koz answered. “Katherine said she needed to grab something and I left Ombric in the produce section. He was locked in a rather heated debate over the merits of organic versus non-organic garlic.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. “He got in a fight?”

Koz nodded as he leaned against the car. “With himself.”

Nightlight laughed and bobbed his head like this was typical Ombric behavior. 

Jack was too distracted to be amused. “When did you learn to sign?” He asked.

The corner of Koz’s lip quirked up. “I’ve got a friend who’s mute, so I learned on the fly. What about you? I can’t imagine a small town like this has much of a Deaf Community.”

“I was in Best Buddies,” Jack said, his face reddening slightly as his gaze drifted past Koz’s shoulder. “I maybe used to want to be a special ed teacher, so I learned.”

Koz’s eyebrows rose and Jack flushed, certain he was about to be teased. “That’s the sweetest ambition I’ve ever heard,” Koz said.

It it were possible, Jack blushed even harder. He looked away from Koz, toward Nightlight, only to find that the young boy was giving Jack a look as if to say ‘he’s right, you know’.

Luckily before Jack could be left to stew in his embarrassment for too long, Katherine opened the backseat door opposite Koz. She sat and closed the door behind her, trying to discreetly slip a plastic bag between her feet. There was a moment where all the men realized they could see the Maxi-Pad logo through the plastic and then they all quickly focused on something else. Koz closed the backseat door on his side and got into the driver’s seat.

“Where’s Ombric?” Katherine asked.

Nightlight tapped on his window, drawing her attention outside, where they could all see Ombric walking across the parking lot with a plastic bag and a pleased smile.

There was an expectant pause after he opened the car door and climbed into the passenger seat. 

“Well, what did you get?” Koz asked bemusedly.

“Both!” Ombric said, proudly pulling two cloves of garlic from his bag. “We’ll have one be Sample A and the other Sample B . . .” His smile sagged as he looked between the two cloves. “Oh dear,” he said. “I can’t remember which is which.”

*

A few hours later found the three of them at the fence bordering Burgess High School’s athletic grounds. Jack had thought that breaking and entering for the purpose of stealing would be a little more like the movies, but it actually felt very textbook. He’d broken into the school several times since he discovered there was a window in the boy’s locker room that didn’t close. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d brought boys there for the express purpose of making out (it was hard to find any privacy when you lived in a small town).

So it was with practiced ease that Jack looped his fingers together and boosted Nightlight and Katherine over the fence. Behind them, Koz and Ombric were parked under an old oak tree, fall leaves occasionally drifting down to land on the van’s hood.

Jack climbed the fence last and then jumped down to where the two teens stood waiting. They both had a calm resolution written on their faces that said ‘I’ve done this before’ but there was nervousness in the way they shifted from foot-to-foot that cried: ‘Not many times!’

“Just remember,” Jack said, “we’re supposed to be getting equipment, but number one priority is don’t get caught.”

Even in the dark, Nightlight’s pale hair practically glowed (suddenly the nickname became clear). Jack could see him nodding his head perfectly.

“Do you really think there’ll be any security?” Katherine hissed as they began to jog their way across the track field. 

“Outside the locker rooms they’ve got cameras,” Jack said in between breaths. “I don’t know if they work or if anyone would even be watching them, but some of the stuff in the chem lab is probably worth a lot. Who knows what kind of security they might have?”

They crossed the track fields and Jack was slightly in awe that neither he nor the two teens had tired or slowed, despite the relatively long jog. His leg wasn’t even bothering him and it usually loved to complain when he tried to get anywhere quickly. He chalked it all up to perks of being a werewolf.

“Hey,” he said as they neared the student parking lot. The two teens looked towards him just as he pulled his hood up over his head. They hurried to follow his lead. Koz had purchased what could only be called a break-in kit: 3 black hoodies, 3 pairs of gloves, and 1 set of bolt-cutters. The last item was hanging from the loop of Jack’s pants, banging into his leg with every step.

They hit asphalt and started across the lot, bright street lamps beating down on them and throwing long shadows in their wake. When they’d gotten what they came for they’d stick to the shadows and go slow so as not to break their wares, but for now they’d favor speed.

The rubber soles of their shoes clapped loudly in the quiet of the night, the sound accompanied only by the harshness of their breathing. The air was just cool enough that Jack could almost see his breath and the air cut through his lungs in a way that was almost nostalgic--reminding him of late practice and early jogging.

Climbing through the high window had a different nostalgia, reminding Jack of all the times he’d brought a boyfriend here for privacy. If he were with Koz, he probably would’ve said all the dirty thoughts he was thinking. And just like that he realized he still definitely had a thing for Koz. Huh.

They reached the stretch of brick beneath the window. Here, they each pulled out the second item from their break-in kits: thin leather gloves.

Jack boosted one teen through the window, then the other, then the two of them hauled him up. The window was narrow and seated just above the back row of lockers. The three of them climbed down and Jack lead the way toward the exit.

The squeak of their sneakers echoed eerily. As they moved further from the windows, the locker room became gloomier and gloomier. Jack paused, trying to get his eyes to adjust. He blinked and suddenly the whole room lit up. He froze.

“What’s wrong?” Katherine breathed just off his left.

What was wrong? Why did it suddenly feel like there were flood lights shining down on them? He looked over at her, but she seemed completely oblivious to the fact that she was practically sparkling, the light of the streetlamps outside glancing off her hair and skin. Her green eyes glowed with a brilliant supernatural light. Realization dawned on him.

“I think I just maybe developed werewolf night vision?” Jack said, looking around himself in newfound wonder.

Nightlight snorted. “Oh,” Katherine said, in a rather dismissive tone. “I suppose you are a fairly new lycan.”

“It looks like all glowy . . . it’s like Avatar in here!” Jack said, looking around and admiring the different ways light glanced off the lockers versus the tiles on the floor.

Dead ahead there was a brilliant patch of red glancing off the floor. He walked towards it. “What’s that?”

Nightlight snickered and Jack turned to look at them, a nearly blinding red light catching his eye as he did so. He blinked spots from his vision as he looked up at the ‘Exit’ sign, which seemed so bright it threw splashes of red light across everything nearby.

He looked at the two teenagers sheepishly.

Nightlight made a mockingly dopey face and signed, “What’s that?”

Katherine let out a laugh, then swatted Nightlight playfully. “Don’t tease!” She scolded at the same time that Jack poked Nightlight’s shoulder.

“Who taught you to sign that? Hm?” He said, trying to cover his embarrassment.

Nightlight just snickered.

The three set off, walking under the blazing exit sign and out into the empty halls of the school. It was eerie being in the empty school so late at night. Everything seemed familiar and yet entirely different. Through it all there was the pervading sense of otherness, much as he’d felt a month ago when he’d returned to his empty house. This place had once been his, but he no longer belonged here now.

He led the teens to the science hallway. Apparently, he hadn’t suffered through Chemistry twice for nothing. He’d even served a couple of lunch detentions washing out beakers and putting them away in the storage room.

Burgess High was the type of school that spent more money on lab equipment than lab security. This meant that the only thing between them and their target was a single padlock. 

Jack pulled the bolt-cutters from his pants. He’d never used one before, but it thievery was not beyond Manny’s pack. Nightlight took the tool with a sense of surety that nearly failed as he struggled to coordinate himself enough to grab hold of the lock between the bolt-cutters teeth. Jack could sense Katherine’s impatience, but before either of them could say anything, Nightlight got it. It took a few tries to actually snap the lock, but then they were in.

Jack led the way inside, pulling three boxes from the shelf by the storage door, careful to choose only those short enough that they would fit through the locker window. He gave two of these to Katherine and Nightlight, keeping one for himself. Ombric wasn’t able to climb the fence or get into the window, so he’d written up an extensive list, with illustrations even. They’d already divided Ombric’s list between the three of them, so they split up, moving quickly down the narrow aisles. The only sounds to be heard for the next few moments were the clink of glass and metal as they gathered Ombric’s list. Occasionally they’d nearly bump into each other, but otherwise they were quick and quiet, until--

CRASH!

Jack started. The glassware in his box rattled against each other as he did. He ducked his head down and crept slowly around the corner. He found Nightlight standing over an overturned box full of--now broken--glassware, his hands empty and a frown on his face.

“Oops,” Jack said.

“Nightlight,” Katherine moaned, “I nearly had a heart attack!” There was the dullest edge of criticism in Katherine’s tone. Nightlight kicked the box of broken glass across the floor, making such a sudden ruckus that Katherine and Jack both jumped.

Jack hurried to set his box on the floor and rushed to Nightlight’s side. Katherine looked between the two of them, unmoving and unsure.

“Hey,” Jack said. “It’s fine, just get another box and start over.” He gave Nightlight’s shoulder a light pat.

With a frustrated sigh, Nightlight dutifully walked around the broken glass and grabbed another box.

They finished collecting the rest of the supplies with little incident other than the occasional confusion over what it was they were supposed to get.

Jack hurried to find his last two items, then helped Nightlight finish getting his things. They were just about to cross off the second-to-last item on his list when Katherine went very, very still. She slowly tipped her head to the side, her face pale and eyes wide. Nightlight stopped moving as well, cocking his head to the side. Jack glanced at the both of them in confusion before realization struck. He extended his hearing out into the halls and instantly heard footsteps.

“Crap,” he hissed, his hearing popping back to normal. “Time to go.”

The two teens nodded, their faces pinched in anxiety.

Jack led the way out of the chem lab and headed down the hall, trying to move as quickly as possible despite their very noisy wares.

He could hear the footsteps not far away and when he turned next to look behind them he saw a glaring white patch on the floor at the end of the hall--the same as the light thrown by the exit sign, but much, much brighter.

Wordlessly, Jack grabbed Nightlight’s sleeve and pulled him into the recess where a line of lockers broke for a doorway. Katherine hurried after them. They lined up in a row, holding their boxes tightly and hardly daring to breath as a flashlight was shone down the end of the hall, illuminating the hall floor like daylight on river water.

Katherine spoke, her voice so low that Jack nearly didn’t hear her. “If he finds us, should we change?”

Jack blanched. What kind of solution was that? “No,” he hissed, not daring to raise his voice beyond the barest whisper.

Thankfully, the light receded and they all fell still and silent as they listened to the footsteps moving on toward the next hallway.

Jack let out a sigh of relief.

They crept down the hall, hearing extended to keep track of the man with the flashlight. Jack was extremely glad to have developed his night vision or this would not have gone very well.

They got to the locker room. Nightlight climbed through the back window first, then accepted their boxes of stolen goods from the other side. This required some careful rearrangement and creativity to ensure everything got through the narrow window without breaking. Finally Katherine and Jack crawled through the opening. Here, Jack’s night vision stopped being useful.

He blinked, but his eyes shifted from night vision to normal vision so rapidly, he felt like he was looking at a strobe light. The streetlamps triggered his normal sight, while the deep darkness beyond triggered his night vision.

“What’s wrong?” Katherine hissed. 

“My night vision is all mess up,” Jack said, trying to regain his sense as he picked up his box. “I think I’m having a sensory attack.”

Katherine quirked an eyebrow, but Nightlight nodded his head knowingly. He balanced his box of glassware on his hip and took Jack’s elbow. They moved quickly and quietly around the edge of the parking lot, avoiding the lights. Once they were free of the streetlamps, Jack’s eyes felt better and finally settled on nightvision.

Behind them, a car pulled into the parking lot. A quick look over his shoulder and Jack saw it was a cop car. Shit.

Jack’s heart was pounding in his throat as they climbed over the baseball field fence and passed over the boxes of glassware. The cop car never pulled out of the parking lot. They loaded the back of the minivan, got in, and drove away, as simply as if they’d gone grocery shopping, except for the enormous look of relief on Koz and Ombric’s faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nini's got some OOC angst going on rn, but I promise I love him and won't character assassinate him, he's just going through a rough time.


	3. Open Investigation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Koz let out a self-conscious laugh and Jack’s chest squeezed. Before he could stop himself, he spoke, “You’re adorable.”
> 
> Koz flushed as his expression slipped into one of pleasure mixed with indignant outrage. Jack just smiled, albeit somewhat sheepishly. So long as he didn’t act like Koz’s outward flustering made him inwardly flustered as well, he could pretend that the interest that’d once sparked between them wasn’t making a resurgence.

The next morning found the cabin still crowded, but a little less awkward than the one before. After breakfast and some very quick showers, they unloaded the car and helped Ombric set up his lab space on the kitchen table. Ombric bustled around the table, getting himself organized, while Koz worked on his laptop at the unused desk in the corner. Opposite the desk lay the bed, Jack’s impromptu Sign Language classroom. He’d just sat the two teens down for a lesson when Koz made an interested sound at his screen. 

“Did you find an RV?” Jack asked.

“No, but a body was found in Claussen with no heart,” Koz said offhandedly, his eyes not leaving the computer screen. He barely noticed how that drew the attention of everyone in the room.

Jack understood first. “Is this a hunting thing?”

Koz looked up and saw them all staring at him. “Of course,” he said, like it were obvious. “I’ve been looking into that creature from the other day . . .” He fell quiet and both he and Jack eyed the exiles, remembering suddenly that they hadn’t told them about the body they’d found. Jack was a little surprised to see a sort of uneasy understanding pass over Ombric’s face.

“Do you mean . . . the thing in the trees?” Katherine asked in a quiet voice.

Jack and Koz turned to look at her. “You saw it?” Koz asked.

“We don’t know what we saw,” Ombric interrupted.

Nightlight finger-spelled. ‘M-O-N-K-E-Y-?’

“It looked like a monkey?” Koz asked.

“It looked like a person,” Katherine said with a tone of deep revulsion.

Ombric held up his hands. “Now, now.” He turned to Koz. “A few nights before we found you, we were all huddled together trying to sleep when Katherine heard something. We saw a shape in the trees above us. It disappeared--”

“Literally disappeared?” Koz asked.

“Oh . . .” Ombric adjusted his glasses. “No,” he said. “I think it realized that we’d noticed it and then it darted away.”

“I thought it was a bear,” Katherine said, shifting uneasily. “I only saw its shape through the leaves.”

“It was eerie,” Ombric said, his tone disturbed. “It was completely silent, just--watching us, right over our heads . . . We didn’t sleep after that. How did you two come across it?”

“Uh . . .” Jack winced.

“We found a body,” Koz said, “entirely eaten.”

The exiles seemed less put off by the body being eaten than Jack would’ve thought normal, but then he remembered Manny’s quasi-cannibalism. “It definitely wasn’t a werewolf either, so it couldn’t have been Manny’s pack,” Jack said. His stomach turned at a sudden thought. “Wait--you guys haven’t eaten humans, have you?”

Koz looked up at Jack with wide eyes. Obviously he hadn’t thought of that either. They both looked over expectantly as Ombric made a face. “No. And I don’t want you to think that’s normal for our kind. Most lycans only bite. Certainly, the urge to eat the human they prey on is unusual. I hypothesize that the drive that compels lycans to attack humans is not one of hunger, but of a need to increase the species through lycanthropy’s unique reproduction method.” He shrugged. “As for Manny, I think his habit of eating his victims is as much about hunger as rape is about having sex--it is not fueled by a biological drive, but rather, a desire to exert power over another person.”

Jack looked sidelong at Koz and was startled to find him looking nearly green. He then remembered how Koz’s wife died. Time to change the subject.

“So Koz, do you think this new body was killed by the thing in the trees?” He asked.

Koz rubbed his forehead, still looking a little pale. “Er . . . At this point it’s possible, but I don’t believe so. Creatures don’t usually change their MO, but we have no idea what the circumstances were or anything regarding this monster. We honestly just don’t have enough information to go on at the moment.” He looked at the laptop screen thoughtfully. He tapped his fingers on the keyboard. “It happened in Claussen, so North and Bunny might be on it already but . . .” He leaned back in his chair, frowning. “It won’t be good if their investigation leads them into the woods and they find us.”

Ombric blinked owlishly behind his thick glasses. “Why would that be bad? Aren’t these people hunters like you?

Jack winced. Koz glanced over at Ombric, his expression carefully neutral. “Our relationship is similar to yours and Manny’s.”

“Ah,” Ombric flushed slightly, “Never mind then! Yes, let’s avoid detection.”

Koz nodded, his expression still stormy as he glanced toward Jack. “I think the best course of action is for you and me to jump on this investigation before they do.”

Jack sat up at that. “You and me?”

Koz nodded, the corners of his lips quirking up in a ghost of a smile. “Hunters work in groups. We can let Ombric focus on the cure and these two--” he fixed a stare on the two teens in turn, “--you two focus on finding an RV.”

He looked back at Jack and Jack raised an eyebrow. “So . . . I’m coming along for this?”

Koz nodded. “But considering we’re both missing persons still,” he said, “we’re going to have to put together a disguise.”

*

They’d gone to Mr. Qwerty. Jack was starting to think of the golem as a sort of hunters’ secretary. He ‘made a note’ that Koz was on this case as well as the case of the dead camper, scowling all the while because Koz refused to have his name attached to either case.

“I’m supposed to be dead,” Koz pointed out, “Dead men don’t pick up cases.”

They got what they needed from Koz’s storage locker. Mr. Qwerty then produced another key leading to . . . a bathroom.

“Some hunters live on the road,” Koz said with a shrug. “Having a private bathroom available is a blessing.”

A few hours later and Jack was trying not to fidget in his newly acquired suit (Mr. Qwerty also apparently had access to a closet-full of spare clothing). They were driving a different car, nicer than the van, but not too nice.

Occasionally, Jack caught a glimpse of his reflection in the windshield or side mirror and each time he did a double take. He wasn’t wearing a pair of glasses with a rubber nose, but he may as well have been for how weird he felt looking in the mirror. His white hair had always been very unique. As a missing person about to approach a bunch of police officers, it would’ve been too distinctive. So naturally, they’d dyed his hair brown. He couldn’t decide if he liked it or not, it was just . . . weird.

He glanced toward Koz. He was wearing a disguise as well, albeit a rather pitiful one--but if it worked for Clark Kent then what was Jack to say? Jack may have discovered a secret glasses kink because Koz with glasses was maybe twice as attractive as Koz without. And then to top it off he was wearing a suit. Not an awkward-fitting, borrowed suit like Jack’s--a suit meant for Koz. The overall effect was that Koz was damn attractive at the moment and by the time they pulled up in front of the police station Jack was trying to suppress a fantasy of forbidden love between FBI agents.

“All right,” Koz said, killing the engine. “Now remember, they’re going to peg you as a rookie, so don’t worry about looking nervous.”

“Don’t talk too much or ask too many questions,” Jack repeated Koz’s earlier lecture. “And it won’t be a problem that I don’t have a fake badge like yours?” Jack asked.

Koz shook his head. “These men know me--or think they know me. I’ll be able to introduce you as my partner and they’ll believe me.” Koz put his hand on the car door. “Ready?”

Jack nodded.

The inside of the police station looked surprisingly like an office: very drab, very boring, lots of desks. Jack tried to look like this wasn’t his first time at a police station and kept close to Koz’s side.

“Agent Farida!” The receptionist the door jumped to. “We weren’t expecting you!”

“I know,” Koz said, his accent going twice as posh. “I’m sorry to drop in, I only just received word--”

“Agent Farida?” An older man with a bald head and the jowls of a basset hound strode over, his face darkening. “I’m afraid I missed the memo--what case are you taking off my hands this time?” He spoke cordially enough, but there was a well-polished edge to his voice.

“Hello, Captain,” Koz said, his tone suddenly clipped, growing icy to match the officers. “As I was telling Miss Brewer here, we were sent out quite suddenly. I apologize if our offices failed to notify you immediately.”

The man’s eyes slid over to Jack.

“This is my new partner, Agent Annie,” Koz said quickly, barely letting Jack get out a ‘nice to meet you’ before continuing. “We’re here about the body found this morning with no heart?”

The man sighed through his nose. “I had a feeling you’d come in about that one.”

They were showed to an interrogation room--apparently one of the only places you could have a little privacy in the whole station. 

“Would you like some coffee or tea, agents?” The receptionist asked politely, one manicured hand holding the door open. 

“Yes, tea please, Miss Brewer,” Koz said with a practiced ease.

“Uh, coffee. Thanks,” Jack stuttered.

She smiled softly at Jack as if to say ‘poor dear’, before ducking out again.

There was a quiet pause and then Koz explained. “It usually takes a minute for them to gather the case files.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Poor Miss Brewer is probably crying over the teakettle right now, thinking Bunny transferred. She had quite the crush on him!”

Jack snorted. “I’m not surprised . . .”

Koz smirked wryly. “He was a looker, I’ll admit.”

Jack quirked an eyebrow. “Was he straight?”

Koz winced. “I made out with his dad once.”

Jack slapped a hand over his mouth. He was supposed to be an FBI agent--he couldn’t fall apart laughing. “Yeah, that’d complicate things I bet.”

Koz let out a self-conscious laugh and Jack’s chest squeezed. Before he could stop himself, he spoke, “You’re adorable.”

Koz flushed as his expression slipped into one of pleasure mixed with indignant outrage. Jack just smiled, albeit somewhat sheepishly. So long as he didn’t act like Koz’s outward flustering made him inwardly flustered as well, he could pretend that the interest that’d once sparked between them wasn’t making a resurgence.

Luckily he was rescued by the reappearance of the receptionist, bearing their drinks and a file under her arm.

“Here you go . . .” She said, carefully offering the drinks before she set the file on the table. “Here’s the case file we have on the Rider murder, we’re still waiting back on a few lab reports though.”

“I’ll need to see those when they’re finished,” Koz said, taking a pad of paper and a pen from his inside pocket, he scribbled something on it. “We’ve done some reconfiguring with our security lately. Here is my new contact information and Agent Annie’s as well.”

Miss Brewer thanked him, took the paper and left.

Koz started going through the file, laying out photos and glancing over the crime scene reports. Jack watched it all warily. He glanced over the photos and felt a strange sense of duality. On the one hand, it felt like a movie--the photographs weren’t so different from something he’d see on CSI, but they were real. The dead girl in the pictures was a real person who’d really died.

“Let’s see . . .” Koz said, “Maria Rider found yesterday apparently disemboweled . . . bloody paw prints not belonging to her dog were found at the scene along with . . . oh, lovely.” He held up a particularly gruesome photo. “The remains of what appears to be Miss Rider’s pomeranian.”

Jack winced. “Poor doggie . . .”

“Looks like they thought it was a random animal attack, but then they discovered bloody footprints at the scene--too large to be Miss Rider’s.” Koz flicked through the photos. “Then there’s the fact that the dog was eaten and Miss Rider wasn’t--she was disemboweled and an animal certainly attacked her, but the only organ not in tact was the heart--which is missing.”

“So . . . does that narrow it down any?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” Koz said in a tone that bordered near pleased. He gathered up the photos and paperwork and put them back in the folder. “We should go to where the body was found and . . . sniff around.”

A few moments later they were on their way, the file open on Jack’s lap.

Koz had suggested he read through them, but Jack hadn’t anticipated how dull they’d be. He might as well have been doing homework for how interesting it was, and the gorey pictures weren’t exactly endearing either. For the first time he was starting to see hunting as a job. A highly illegal, unpaid job. Finally he gave up, reordering the papers before closing the folder.

Miss Rider lived in a small, one story house at the furthest edge of the Claussen University housing. It was the sort of grungy, barely-cared for house you’d expect a graduate student to live in, with the edge of the Claussen forest behind a fence in the backyard--which was really nothing more than an overgrown parking space.

The brakes squeaked slightly as Koz pulled into the space. He reached over to Jack’s side and opened the glove compartment to reveal a box of what looked to be tissue paper, but was actually full of elastic gloves. He took a pair for himself and then offered a pair to Jack.

Jack struggled to pull on the sticky, stretchy gloves as he got out of the car. He raised an eyebrow to see a mountain of beer cans piled along the forest side of the fence, easily three feet tall and five feet wide. It seemed Miss Rider didn’t believe in recycling. “Classy,” he muttered as he managed to snap one glove on.

Koz snorted. “The joys of living in a college town.”

Koz started toward the house. He took one step up onto the house’s rickety back steps and paused. He looked back to Jack’s expectant face, then quickly glanced around to make sure no one was looking before he knelt on the bottom-most step and started sniffing.

Jack snorted. “Picking up the scent boy?” He cooed.

Koz gave him a withering look and kept at it. “I’m definitely getting something,” he said, standing up. “It might help if I can pinpoint Miss Rider’s and the dog’s scent, then I can separate them out of the scent profile and I might be able to track our culprit.”

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do you get the sensory attacks with smell?”

Koz shook his head. “I haven’t had one in a long, long time. Hopefully you’ll be done with them now too.”

“My night vision came in the other day,” Jack said. “It was kind of . . .”

“Disorienting?”

“Yeah.”

Koz shrugged. “Everything gets easier with time it seems. It might be better to talk to Ombric about it--I’m only six months ahead of you. Who knows? We could both be in for some wild change with no idea what’s coming.”

“So long as it doesn’t come with sensory attacks, I think I’ll be fine,” Jack said.

Koz opened the door with a wry grin. “That’s the spirit; things can only go up from here.”

An ironic thing to be said as one opens the door onto a murder scene, but Jack didn’t say anything.

Miss Rider’s place was just as shabby on the inside as it was on the outside. Faint lines of graffiti could be seen beneath the paint on the walls and dirt encrusted every corner. Miss Rider had obviously attempted to brighten her living room with colorfully patterned throw pillows and a variety of scented candles to adorn her book shelves. There was a couch across from a television set and the front door lay directly across the room from the back door they’d come through. Jack was oblivious to all of this, however. His attention was immediately captured by an enormous brown stain in the middle of the living room floor.

Jack’s stomach turned. That was blood. That was a big blood stain because that was where Miss Rider was killed and ripped apart.

Koz stepped into the room, but Jack hung back. Koz noticed and raised an eyebrow at him. “All right?”

Jack tried for a smile but it came out as more of a wince. “Yeah . . .”

Koz looked at him thoughtfully and then nodded. “You can stay there if you like, I’ll just be a moment.”   
Jack swallowed. He wanted to tough it out, but he was feeling distinctly nauseous, so he decided to stay put. He avoided looking at the stain and watched as Koz sniffed around, checking the windows and floors for who knew what before he was apparently satisfied. 

“What did you used to do before you had the super sniffer?” Jack asked from his place at the doorway, breathing deeply through the mouth to try and settle his stomach.

Koz smirked and left his place at the window. “We interviewed witnesses and prayed they didn’t turn out to be the monster we were hunting. This might actually make things infinitely easier . . .” Koz said, eyebrows quirking as he stalked toward the front door.

There was a doggy-door set into the front door, and while Jack was still ignoring the big blood stain, he couldn’t help but notice the bloody paw prints heading out. Koz knelt and reached into his pocket for a pocket knife. He cut a small square of carpet from the floor. From another pocket he pulled a neatly folded paper envelope. He tucked the carpet square into the envelope and stood smoothly.

“Do you think you can track whatever did this?” Jack asked.

Koz frowned. “I could try . . .” He trailed off. “. . . but I’ll wait until nightfall. I don’t want to leave the exiles alone too long. I don’t quite trust them.”

“Yeah . . .” Jack nodded. He thought back to when they’d nearly been caught at the school--how Katherine had asked if they should transform. “I don’t know if they’re really bad or dangerous or whatever, but they definitely have some warped ideas for how to handle things.”

Koz lead the way back to the car, his somber expression softening slightly. “It might also be a little conspicuous for a grown man to go crawling around sniffing at stuff in broad daylight.”

Jack crossed around the front of the car and shot Koz a cheeky grin. “Oh, yeah. It’ll look a lot less weird if someone saw that at night.”

*

To say Jack was dissatisfied with his first hunting excursion was a bit of an understatement, but Koz seemed quite pleased. They arrived back at the cabin by late afternoon. Nightlight was sitting on the porch, a gentle breeze ruffling his pale hair, but he didn’t seem to notice. His mood couldn’t have been more apparent if a storm cloud had been hovering over his head. He didn’t look up as they approached, until finally Jack called out to him.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Nightlight glanced up at him then jumped. He gestured emphatically to Jack’s hair.

Jack snickered at his shock. “You like it? It’s part of my secret agent disguise.”

Nightlight nodded slowly, staring at his head.

“How did the hunting go?” Ombric’s voice called from the cabin door--which they always left just slightly ajar to avoid dealing with the mountain ash ring. Koz was careful not to upset the shoe they used as a doorstop as the two of them entered the cabin.

Jack paused and looked around. The cobwebs that’d been gathering in the top corners of the room were gone. The counters were wiped down. All of their dirty dishes had been cleaned and put away. Jack breathed deeply. It even smelled better! The cabin may have felt crowded, but at least the three house guests were cleanly ones.

The only cluttered space left was the kitchen table, which was covered in glassware and scattered notes. Ombric stood beside it all with Katherine sitting on one of the kitchen chairs just off to the side. Her chin sat in her hands and she hardly looked up as the Koz and Jack entered the room.

Nightlight crossed around behind them and sat on the (newly made) bed, looking pointedly away from Ombric and Katherine.

Jack glanced at the other two and found Ombric obliviously taking notes while Katherine also pointedly avoided looking at Nightlight. She glanced up at them instead and started in surprise.

“Yeah,” Jack said, “I dyed my hair. Part of my transformation into--” he lowered his voice, “--Agent Annie.”

This didn’t have quite the effect he’d hoped for. Nightlight snickered and Ombric finally looked up at him--only to give a comical start. “Your hair’s dyed!”

Jack snorted and shared a look with Katherine before her eyes lowered back to the floor.

“In answer to your question,” Koz said, slipping off his suit jacket and hanging it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “It went quite well.”

Koz pulled the paper envelope from his pocket and retrieved the carpet square he’d taken from Miss Rider’s house. He offered the square to Ombric. “Give that a sniff, tell me if it’s familiar.”

Ombric did so with the same polite courtesy of one taste-testing someone else’s recipe. “What am I smelling for?” He looked at Koz expectantly and then his eyes lit up with realization. “Oh--you’re a rather new lycan aren’t you?”

Koz’s eyebrow quirked. “Er . . . yes?”

The lines around Ombric’s eyes crinkled into a smile. He took the carpet piece from Koz and sniffed it gingerly. “I smell: a human woman, young, I’d guess a college student judging by the alcohol. She has a dog . . .” He sniffed again. “Not a Yorkie or a Beagle, but I’m guessing small. Male. And I smell blood. Human blood and dog blood. A lot of it. Quite a lot of men. Rubber gloves. Oh--that’s probably the police! And . . .” His face turned thoughtfully. “A coyote.”

He smiled up at Jack and Koz expectantly. They both stared.

Jack raised his hand. “Question? How can you tell that it’s not a Beagle or a Yorkie?”

“I’ve smelled them before and they’ve got a unique smell. I haven’t smelled too many other dogs though, so I couldn’t say what kind.”

“And it’s a small--male--dog?”

Ombric nodded and looked down at the carpet square with a thoughtful frown on his face. “It’s both amazing and disturbing how much information you can gather from animal urine.” He shrugged and offered the square to Koz.

Koz started at it a moment, his upper lip curled in disgust, before he finally accepted it--albeit gingerly. “So . . . a coyote?”

Ombric nodded.

“A magical coyote or just a normal one?”

Ombric shrugged. “It was a little strange. It sort of smelled . . . well, dead. But also not dead. But not like it was in the room and then died, it wasn’t freshly dead it was . . . dried up and dead.”

“So do you just go around sniffing dead things?” Jack asked incredulously.

“Urine and decay are quite potent; it’s hard not to smell them!” Ombric said a little defensively. His expression shifted quickly to a sheepish shrug. “And I like to pet dogs.” He turned to Koz, who was trying to put the carpet square back into the envelope without touching it too much. “Did that coyote thing kill that girl?”

Koz frowned. “It’s looking quite likely. It sounds like we’re looking for a chupacabra.”

There was a moment of stunned silence while Koz set the paper envelope down on the table and crossed the room to the sink.

“Okay, I’ll bite first,” Jack said, “--a what?”

Koz looked up at him, surprised. “A chupacabra,” he said simply as he washed his hands. “You know, a goat-sucker?”

“They exist?”

Koz turned the water off, his lips quirked upwards. “Werewolves exist.”

“Fascinating!” Ombric chirped. “And they live outside of Mexico?”

“They’re live in and around South and Central America. They don’t usually get so far north,” Koz said flippantly, drying his hands on a dish towel. “They don’t do well in the cold. I’ve only seen them when people smuggle them up north, usually for dog-fights.”

“And they smell decayed?” Ombric asked.

Koz shrugged. “As it was explained to me, chupacabras are born when farmers don’t respect the land. The land utilizes whatever vessel is available to it--typically a coyote--and possesses it, like an angry spirit. Once they’re created however, they’re pretty much free to do whatever or go wherever they want.”

Jack glanced at Katherine in disbelief, but Ombric was already speaking: “Fascinating! Are you going to kill it or capture it? Either way, I’d like to examine it . . . for science.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Koz said.

“Well, we’ll keep an eye--or rather, our noses--on the lookout for undead coyotes,” Ombric said, glancing toward Katherine and Nightlight in turn. He closed his notebook with a snap and set it aside. “Now, change of subject, but I could use that wolfsbane you mentioned, and I’d like to get it before things frost over again. We were thinking Nightlight would go with me. With that thing in the trees still out there, I figured it’s best not to travel alone.” Ombric said this all quite carefully and Jack noticed Katherine look away and shift in her seat.

Koz frowned and looked toward Jack appraisingly. “All right,” he said at length. “We’ll get supper started, shall we?”

“Oh, that sounds lovely!” Ombric said as he hauled his bag up from the floor with only a few audible cracks from his spine. He slipped the straps over his shoulders. “You be good, darling,” he cooed to Katherine. Her gloomy expression cracked as she shot him a withering glare. 

Nightlight got up quietly and followed the older man out the door, leaving Jack and Koz to a moody teenager and an awkward silence.

“I’ll uh . . . get dinner started then, shall I?” Koz said, unbuttoning his shirt cuffs and rolling up his sleeves.

Jack watched him go to the fridge and start pulling out ingredients. He glanced at Katherine, who was still sitting gloomily. If only it weren’t so quiet . . . Right! They had a television!

He went to turn it on, flicking through the channels before he settled on the news. It wasn’t entertaining, but it made for good ambient noise. Hm. But maybe Katherine would like to watch something. He turned to ask just in time to see her slip out of the cabin, a firm frown on her face and her eyes red and wet.

Jack sat on the bed and watched the door slowly creak closed behind her, bouncing gently off the doorstop.

He glanced to Koz and saw the man was watching as well, his eyebrow raised questioningly.

“Should we do something?” Jack asked quietly.

Koz shrugged. “It’s not really our business . . .” He said unconvincingly.

“Maybe we should talk to her?” Jack blanched as he said it.

Koz frowned and quirked an eyebrow. “Not a bad idea,” his tone implied he didn’t think it was a good idea either. “But I’m making dinner so . . .” He smiled at Jack expectantly.

Jack rolled his eyes. Well, it had been his idea after all.

He regretted his decision as soon as he stepped outside to the sound of Katherine crying. Why was it that the sound of someone crying always made him feel completely helpless? He was slightly terrified as he approached her.

Katherine was sitting at the corner of the deck, the same place Nightlight had sat. Evening was starting to set in and the bars of the deck railing threw long, vertical shadows across her small form.

Katherine seemed to realize she wasn’t alone. She sniffed and rubbed her eyes in what was supposed to be a subtle move. She grew quiet, the occasional little hiccup was the only sign that she’d been crying.

Hesitantly, Jack approached. “Hey,” he said. “Uh . . .” What to say? “What’s up?” He mentally kicked himself. ‘What’s up?!’

“N-nothing,” she said, her voice still wet.

Jack came to stand beside her, then thought better of it. He crouched, letting out a small groan as he did. He was still wearing his borrowed suit and it was not comfortable. He sat, stretching his legs between the bars of the railing. He didn’t know what to say so he said nothing. He loosened the tie Koz had embarrassingly had to help him put on earlier.

Inspiration struck.

“This is about Nightlight, isn’t it?”

Katherine sighed, her shoulders slumping inward, but she said nothing.

“Hm . . .” Jack thought. He leaned back, bracing his arms behind him and kicking his legs slightly. “Maybe this isn’t my place to say and you can totally tell me to fuck off--but it seems like you two . . .” He sought for the right words. “Have a lot of tension?” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to gage her reaction. “Did you two used to date or something?”

Katherine’s face couldn’t have gone more red if she’d been doused in red paint. Jack smiled despite himself and looked away in order to get a hold of his features. Katherine reminded him so strongly of his little sister then, he almost felt homesick. Of course, he’d always teased Emma mercilessly about her crushes--it was in the big brother handbook. Dealing with Katherine would be a little different.

“We weren’t dating,” Katherine mumbled. “But . . . we kind of were . . .?” Jack schooled his expression enough to look back at her and found her seeking understanding in his face.

He raised his eyebrows. “You liked each other but you weren’t official yet?”

Katherine nodded. “But . . . well, he’s different now. He didn’t used to act this way. He was so sweet. He’d never hurt anyone in his life. He was just sick to death when Manny put us through those trials. We kept trying to think of ways to pass without really succeeding like Sophie did--boy, that made her so mad.” She chuckled wetly. The smile slipped from her face and her eyes went distant, her thoughts miles away. She shook her head abruptly. “Ever since he was shot,” she said. “He gets angry over the smallest things--and he gets angry at me! He used to be so patient, and he always knew what to say to keep me grounded and now everything I try to say or do, he gets mad at!”

Jack nodded, understanding coming to him. “Okay, so . . . story time: a few years ago, I broke my leg.” He patted his thigh. “My femur--which in case you didn’t know--is a really bad break. I had to stay in the hospital, go to physical therapy, wheelchairs, crutches, cane--I had to learn how to walk again. It was not fun, believe me. And when I was done with it all, my friends were all in college, and I was going to have to repeat senior year, and I’d lost my chance at a track scholarship.” He glanced at Katherine to see her patiently listening.

“It might be a little different than your guys’ situation, but I think I have an idea of what’s going through Nightlight’s head. He’s angry because he’s still not recovered. He’s frustrated because things that should be easy are suddenly impossible, and he has to rely on help for everything. Especially if you used to rely on him more, he’ll be upset that now you have to take care of him. And he’s probably scared shitless because, well . . . he still can’t talk. He might not ever be able to again and that’s . . .”

Jack trailed off suddenly. Katherine was crying again, not even trying to conceal her tears this time. Jack looked away, shame making his cheeks flush. He hadn’t meant to make her cry! “I’m sorr--”

“What should I do?” She asked, her voice thick. “I want to help him, but I don’t know what to do.”

Wasn’t that the million dollar question. “Just . . .” Jack struggled to find something other than a useless placation. Finding none, he offered the best platitude he could think of. “You just need to be there. Just . . . give him some more space. Let him be angry and frustrated for a while. He might never be exactly the same as how he was--near death experiences will do that to you--so just prepare yourself for that possibility.”

The tears were back again.

Jack shifted uncomfortably. He’d gone on a little further than platitudes . . . Perhaps he should’ve just kept it at that.

He pulled his legs back through the bars so that he could balance better. Taking care to gage her reaction, he slung an arm around her shoulders. When she didn’t pull away, he rubbed gentle circles across her back.

He half expected her to pull back, but she leaned into him. Her crying broke out into big, hiccupy sobs. Jack swallowed hard, totally overwhelmed. He almost felt like crying himself out of sympathy. He let out a long exhale and stared off into the trees beyond the cabin and tried to ignore the sudden resurgence of homesickness that he’d managed to put off for so long. A few deep breaths later, Katherine calmed down enough to sit up, pulling away from Jack’s side. She wiped her eyes, her shoulders still shaking with hiccups. “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s cool,” he said weakly. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you better advice.”

She shook her head, sniffing. “N-no. I needed to hear it.” A few more tears fell from her eyes, but there was no force behind them. She took a deep shaky breath and then let it out again. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Jack said. He pulled his arm back and shifted away as un-awkwardly as possible. 

The sun had started to dip beneath the tree line. Without Katherine so near, Jack realized how much cooler it had gotten. He shivered and rubbed his arms. “I think I’m going to go in--you coming?”

She shook her head. “I’m just going to . . . think for a little while.”

Jack nodded and stood. He slipped back into the cabin.

It was pleasantly toasty inside. Koz stood at the counter next to the stove. He didn’t turn to look at Jack. There was something vaguely guilty in the line of his shoulders that practically screamed: I’ve been eavesdropping!

Jack approached as Koz dumped something he’d been chopping into a pan. Whatever it was began to sizzle and crack. Koz dumped the knife and cutting board into the sink and washed his hands. Jack sauntered over to his side and shot him a suspicious look. Koz quirked an eyebrow and pointedly avoided looking at him. 

Koz had three of the stove’s four burners going. One had a pot of diced potatoes boiling. The pan he’d just added to had a small pile of meat chunks browning. The third burner was occupied by a teakettle. Koz reached across the stove and pulled the kettle off the back burner. He picked up one of two mugs waiting next to the stove for just this reason apparently. He filled the mug and offered it to Jack.

“How did it go then?” He asked pleasantly.

“I think you know how it went,” Jack said, though he took the mug anyway. He took a careful sip. He wasn’t very fond of tea, but it was achingly warm and incredibly soothing to hold. “I had no idea what to say.”

“You did better than me,” Koz chuckled. “All I could ever do when Seraphina was sad was make her a cup of tea and wait for her to tell me all about it.” He went quiet, his eyes going as distant as Katherine’s right before she’d burst into tears.

Jack leaned against him, not quite the one-armed hug that he’d given Katherine, but it startled Koz out of his melancholy. He looked down at Jack with surprise that melted into something unreadable. Jack offered him his mug. “I’d probably accidentally poison you if I tried to make you some comfort tea so you’ll just have to share the one you made me.” He smiled cheekily and was happy to see Koz’s expression twist into a wry grin.

“Don’t mind the indirect kiss,” Jack said as Koz accepted the cup. To his surprise, Koz merely cocked an eyebrow and took a rather noisy sip, all the while offering Jack a playfully appraising look.

Jack’s jaw dropped in half-mocking, half-serious shock at Koz’s casual flirtation. They were back to casual flirting now! He tried and failed to look reproachful. “Kozmotis Pitchiner are you thinking dirty thoughts?”

Koz smirked and it sent a little thrill of pleasure down Jack’s spine. “So what if I am?”

The door squeaked as Katherine entered. Koz and Jack both took an overlarge step away from one another--totally not suspicious at all. Koz suddenly became extremely interested in his cooking while Jack whirled and offer Katherine his least awkward smile.

“Hey Katherine!” He blushed at the high tone of his voice. He cleared his throat. “Did you want some tea?”

Katherine glanced between Koz and Jack, nose crinkling as if she could smell the fishiness in their behavior. “Um . . .” She blushed and glanced between the two of them once again, this time with a distinct air of awareness. “Sure . . .” she said, nearly apologetically.

Jack whirled before he could blush anymore. He reached for the kettle and quickly poured Katherine a cup of tea, all the while ignoring how Koz was trying not to smile.

He took the mug to Katherine, who’d sat down on the bed in front of the television. She seemed to be doing her best to watch them discretely. Jack handed her the mug. At a loss for what to do next, he sat down on the bed as well, putting a good foot of space between the two of them.

Katherine tapped her fingers on the glass, drawing his attention. Hesitantly, she pointed at Koz and then Jack, eyebrows quirked suggestively.

Jack flushed, glancing toward Koz. He hadn’t had too many times to check Koz out from behind. He had great shoulders, perfect posture, and his slacks did wonders for his ass. Jack forced his gaze back on Katherine only to find her also staring at Koz appraisingly. She sipped her tea and glanced toward Jack. She smiled an extremely suggestive smile and gave him a thumbs up.

Jack blushed beet-red and buried his face in his hands.

***

Koz was pleased with himself. He’d started another investigation, maybe patched things over with Jack, and he was doing the cooking tonight so he was making beef stew. They’d been subsisting off frozen dinners for too long now.

He took an onion out from under the stove and pealed it over the trash can. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Katherine on the laptop, hopefully looking for an RV so they could hurry and move the exiles out and no longer have to deal with embarrassing moments like earlier. He mentally cringed.

He washed the peeled onion and set it on a fresh cutting board. He took a deep breath and held it in as he chopped. It was no use though--even before gaining werewolf senses he’d been weak to onions--just the fumes had his eyes stinging and watering. He sniffed ferociously as he diced the onion.

“Um . . . Mister Koz are you okay?” Katherine asked.

Koz flushed and turned to look at the both of them, knife in one hand and half an onion in the other.

“Oh,” Katherine said.

Jack cackled as Koz resumed his task.

He dumped the onion slices in with the browned meat and chased them around the pan with a spatula until they were coated in enough grease that they wouldn’t burn immediately if left unattended.

The evening had taken a surprisingly domestic turn. Koz was used to starting his days at gruesome crime scenes and ending them with quiet dinners at home, but he hadn’t expected to have any such peaceful evenings after . . .

He jerked his thoughts away from his life before--that path was lost to him now. But thinking of how pleasant things were now just made him guilty. ‘Focus on what you’re doing right now,’ he told himself. It was starting to feel like a mantra.

“Shit,” Jack spoke in such a tone of dread, Koz whirled around.

The young man was staring at his trembling hand, the other resting on the back of his neck. Koz reached out his sense and realized by the barely-there ache on the back of his neck, that the sun had gone down. 

“No need to worry about me,” Katherine said nonchalantly. “If you’re going to turn, go ahead and strip.” She didn’t look up from her computer screen.

Jack didn’t need to be told twice. In a moment, he was tearing off his shirt and fumbling to coordinate his hands enough to undo his fly.

Koz set down the garlic he’d been cutting and hurriedly wiped his hands on a towel. He rushed to Jack’s side, helping him to stand even as his legs shook too fiercely to make it on his own. He glanced away as he slipped Jack’s pants and boxers off his hips. Not a second after he’d stepped out of them, the young man jerked violently, his whole body shaking as the change set in in full. Koz laid him on the floor as gently as he could considering Jack’s thrashing.

He glanced up at Katherine just in time to catch her looking pointedly at her laptop, eyes wide and lips pursed around a smile. For a second, Koz thought perhaps she’d been peeping, but then he fully realized that he’d just helped Jack strip down in front of her--right after she walked in on them flirting and definitely caught the scent of their arousal. He considered bashing his head on the nearest wall.

Jack--fully transformed--stood up and shook himself, stumbled, and righted himself again. Koz had half expected there to be a patch of brown fur on top of his head to match his dye job, but he was just as snowy white as he’d always been. Katherine must have noticed the same thing. “Interesting,” she said. “I’m sure Ombric will be fascinated.”

Jack’s nose quivered and he looked toward the stove.

“No,” Katherine chided, “you’re going to have to wait just like the rest of us.”

Jack looked back at her and whined.

Koz hurried to the stove to make sure nothing was burning and lowered the heat as he hurried to finish chopping the garlic and carrots. He quickly added those, seasoning, and the cooked onions and meat to the pot of boiled potatoes, covered the whole thing and put it in the oven.

When he looked back, it was to see Jack sitting quietly while Katherine stroked his head. His lip quirked upwards in the beginnings of a smile.

“He seems to like you,” he said.

The smile Katherine gave him was strangely touched. At his raised eyebrow she explained, “with the exception of when we lost control, we’re usually more true to ourselves in our lupine forms.” Her hand slowed on Jack’s head. “So . . . the fact that he’s letting me touch him means that he’s forgiven me a little bit.”

Oh.

Jack blinked lazily before his steely blue eyes focused on Koz. Much to Koz’s embarrassment, the goofy little wolf boy skipped over to him, burying his head into Koz’s chest, tail wagging. Koz offered Katherine a sheepish grin and she rolled her eyes and looked away as if to say ‘you aren’t fooling anyone!’

Jack pressed his chin to Koz’s chest and looked up at him for a moment before licking the bottom of Koz’s chin. “No!” Koz said sternly, face flushing as Katherine snickered. “No licking!” Jack raised his wolfy eyebrows and looked up at him sweetly before the little rat licked him again.

Katherine burst out laughing while Koz started away, furiously wiping his chin. “It’s potato skins for you then,” he grumbled as Jack panted, tail wagging.

Jack started suddenly, as if struck, his ears folded back and he whimpered, edging closer to Koz’s side. His tail tucked between his legs and his head tipped this way and that, searching the room frantically. He whined.

Katherine seemed to shrink as she glanced around. “What’s he reacting to?”

Koz strained his hearing outside the cabin. Was it the Thing in the Trees? He hurried to the hidden compartment under the floor and withdrew one of his shotguns, quickly loading it with silver pellet rounds as Katherine eased off the bed, away from the window.

Koz looked outside the window through the iron bars. He heard nothing unusual, no large creatures nearby, no suspicious smells--but then it was hard to smell anything over dinner. The room seemed to grow cold and Jack whimpered at Koz’s side.

Koz headed for the door. They were safer inside the cabin, but he wanted to see if he could catch a scent on the breeze. He moved the doorstop, just in case he needed to close the door quickly and poked his head out.

He let out an indignant ‘oof’ as Jack nosed past him and darted outside, the door swinging wide as he pushed through.

“Jack--” Koz called, but the white wolf did nothing more than fling himself onto the grass and stand before the cabin, whining.

Koz frowned and scented the breeze. He smelled humidity and rotting leaves and wood, then wolfsbane, tea, mothballs, and soap. Ombric and Nightlight weren’t far off.

Koz stood in the doorway, weapon cocked.

“Is there something there?” Katherine asked from her place by the stove.

Koz shook his head, but kept his eyes trained on the treeline. Jack stalked around in a circle, eyeing the cabin anxiously. Koz had half a mind to check and see if there wasn’t some awful monster hiding on the roof where he couldn’t see, but just as he was about to go check, Ombric and Nightlight came into view. They looked up in surprise to see Jack anxiously pacing outside the cabin, but when they didn’t recoil in horror, Koz figured there was nothing on the roof.

“What’s going on here?” Ombric asked as they entered the clearing.

Koz lowered his rifle and gestured to Jack. “Something’s got him spooked.”

To his surprise, Ombric just laughed and waved an arm dismissively. “Lycans are more sensitive to unseen things than cats! I wouldn’t worry about it . . .” He seemed to lose steam as he started up the cabin steps, huffing and puffing as Nightlight gently supported him from behind. “You should’ve seen . . .” he panted, “Katherine when she was a little pup! Always barking at nothing . . .”

His breathing was heavy. Hesitantly, Koz stepped back into the cabin. “Let me get you a glass of water,” he said.

He unloaded his gun as he made for the cabinets. Setting the pellet rounds on the counter, he got Ombric a glass of water and put the weapon and ammunition away. He still had his handgun more or less hidden under the mattress, so he didn’t feel too unsure about putting the rifle back in the weapon’s safe.

Ombric took greedy gulps of water in-between deep breaths. 

Koz spotted Nightlight looking at the compartment curiously and Koz kicked it closed. “All right, here’s an important ground rule: no one but me touches any of my weapons unless I say so,” he said sternly. “Especially you two,” he pointed to Katherine and Nightlight in turn. “These are not toys, they’re for killing things.”

Nightlight nodded, quailing under Koz’s glare, but Katherine bristled. “We’re not little kids!” she said, “we know better!”

“Katherine, I don’t want either of you touching any guns,” Ombric said, managing to sound stern despite his breathlessness.

Katherine deflated at that.

Luckily Jack chose that moment to come creeping back to the door, ears flat and body low. He crept toward Koz and pressed against him, keening anxiously. Koz sighed. “Well, maybe tomorrow you can tell me what’s got you so worked up,” he said. “For now, I think it’s time for dinner.”

Jack’s ears perked up at that. Whatever it was that upset him so ceased to matter entirely after Koz spooned a portion of beef stew into a bowl and offered it to him.

The evening ended on a domestic note, with Ombric nodding off to the eleven o’clock news, Koz doing dishes, and Jack curled up by his feet, while Katherine and Nightlight shopped online.

Koz wondered if it was all right to feel content. He didn’t think he’d mind one day feeling at ease, he just wasn’t sure if he was allowed to just yet. He’d abandoned his daughter, he was one of the worst sorts of parents he could be.

He let out a long exhale as he spread out the bed things across the floor, getting ready to sleep. He lay down, the claws of guilt setting their hooks in--then Jack promptly flopped over across his stomach, driving out his negative thoughts along with all the air in his lungs.

“Jack!” He wheezed, shoving the oversized wolf off of him. Jack just panted, smiling a doggish smile, tail wagging.

Koz snorted and repositioned himself while Jack curled against his side. He let out a long breath and pushed the thoughts away. ‘Focus on what you’re doing now,’ he reminded himself. He carded one hand through Jack’s fur and watched his tail swish back and forth until sleep pulled him under at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay mysteries~ Also some character development?? for the exiles at least :D


	4. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Just remember,” Koz said, “to be tactful. When in doubt, let me do the questioning, but don’t be afraid to speak up if you need something clarified or elaborated. They aren’t the police, so they’re less likely to notice if you make any rookie mistakes. But tact is the most important thing. Remember: these people are grieving, if we push too much they’ll shut down or become too hostile to continue questioning.”
> 
> “Okay.” Jack nodded, silently resolving to not say anything.

Koz, Jack, and Nightlight sat parked in a dusty junkyard at the very edge of Burgess. A few yards away Katherine examined a banged up RV while Ombric spoke to the seller. Jack taught Nightlight sign language in the backseat, while Koz had the driver’s seat tipped back. Koz’s eyes were closed, but Jack wasn’t sure if he was asleep.

They were all startled when Koz’s phone rang. Koz sat up, seemingly wide awake. He glanced at the caller ID before answering. “Agent Farida speaking,” he said. 

Jack paused what he’d been signing and straightened in his seat.

Koz was quiet a moment, listening to the person on the other end. He nodded. “I understand. My partner and I are in Burgess at the moment. We can be there in two hours.” He ended the call and let out a sigh.

“Got a new case?” Jack asked.

“That remains to be seen,” Koz said moodily, “but we certainly have a new victim.”

They had something of a mad rush to wrap up with the RV seller, get the exiles home, and re-dye Jack’s hair. Amazingly, exactly two hours later Jack was back in his suit, standing at the reception desk at the Claussen Police Department.

Koz stood at the desk, looking suave in his suit and glasses. Jack tried to mimic his rigid, but simultaneously relaxed posture, but it was harder than it looked and he was already bored. They were waiting for the forensic pathologist to come back from her lunch break (they never had problems like this on CSI). While Koz politely dodged the receptionist’s questions about Bunny, Jack glanced at his surroundings.

The police department looked remarkably office-like. The large room was painted a pale grey-ish brown. A water cooler hugged one wall, a small, but incessant drip creating a puddle on the floor. Clusters of desks filled the room, broken only by small waste-bins and the occasional office plant. Something went ‘bang!’ and Jack looked across the room to see an officer of the law fighting with a copy machine. They never had problems like that on CSI either.

As his eyes roved across men and women sipping coffee, typing up paperwork, and refilling staplers, he caught a pair of officers in his peripheral vision. He didn’t have to look directly at them to know they were staring at Koz and him. He looked away, turning his attention to the reception desk, but his curiosity was peaked. He extended his hearing to snoop on the nearby officers.

“That’s the X-files guy,” an officer whispered across his desk. “Every now and then we get some really weird case and he comes in and takes it out from under us.”

“Jeez . . .” his companion said in awe. “Like . . . he handles alien cases and stuff?”

“Aliens, robots, weaponized diseases—whatever. I’ve seen some of the freaky cases he gets called in on. It’s weird!”

“That guy with him looks even younger than me!”

Jack tried not to react. He forced his eyes to bore into a business card holder, like the District Attorney’s phone number was the most fascinating thing in the world.

“It used to be some other guy . . . maybe he got killed by an alien.”

That was even harder not to react to.

“Maybe that kid is some science experiment created to be a secret agent, and that’s why he’s so young?” suggested the younger officer.

“I could see it.”

That was it. Jack couldn’t take any more without smiling. But he prided himself on being a little shit, so he smiled the best way he could: Slowly, he turned his head to look straight at the two gossiping officers. Then he finally let an amused smile spread across his face. He nearly laughed when both officers froze, eyes widening in panic, before they hurriedly looked down at their desks, suddenly incredibly interested in their paperwork.

“Agent Annie,” Koz said.

Jack started guiltily, but Koz was only getting his attention to tell him the pathologist was back.

It was only as they descended the steps to the station’s basement and the air began to grow cold that Jack realized he was about to see a dead body. He glanced nervously at Koz and caught him subtly rubbing his nose, his brow furrowing like he’d smelled something unpleasant.

A moment later, Jack got a whiff of formaldehyde and understood. He could hardly believe how the pathologist could stand to eat and come back to this—it was awful. They entered a set of double doors and were faced with a large room. It was colder than ever here. Two desks sat pressed against one side, while the back wall was covered in small, metal doors. Jack swallowed hard.

The pathologist grabbed a file from her desk.

“So the deceased’s name was Eddy, no known last name, local homeless man. He was found by hikers near the bridge at Lyon Park. No signs of a struggle, no exterior wounds.” She handed Koz the file. “You’re lucky we picked this one up instead of the hospital. You’d be going through the CDC right now—but the coroner said to call you instead.”

Koz nodded and flicked through the file while the pathologist opened one of the metal drawers and pulled out the gurney inside. Jacks’ stomach turned at the sight of the shrouded body.

She pulled the cloth back to reveal the upper half of a middle-aged man. His skin was nearly grey—not just pale and dead-looking, but grey. His eyes were wide and unblinking, pupils blown and irises filmy. His mouth was wide-open set in a permanent gasp of horror.

Jack felt dizzy. He looked at the ground quickly. ‘Don’t faint, don’t faint,’ he chanted to himself, feeling a clammy chill seep over him while his face burst into a panicky flush. He took a deep breath and the scent of formaldehyde struck him like a slap to the face. ‘Don’t throw up,’ he thought, ‘don’t faint and don’t throw up!’

“Do you need some vapor rub?’ The pathologist asked.

Jack looked up at her in confusion.

“Yes,” Koz said. “I’d like some too.”

“You?” She quirked an eyebrow at him as she walked toward her desk.

“I had my deviated septum fixed,” Koz lied smoothly.

While the pathologist rummaged in her desk drawers, Koz reached out and gave Jack’s hand a quick squeeze. The doctor returned, handing Koz a jar of Vick’s vapor rub. Jack watched Koz rub a dab over his nostrils and followed suit. He could still smell the formaldehyde over the rub’s pungent scent, but it was significantly less potent.

That only solved one of his current discomforts.

Koz pulled on a pair of elastic gloves. The pathologist offered some to Jack as well and he pulled them on, but he had zero intent to touch the dead man.

Koz had no such qualm. He leaned in close, looking right into the dead man’s eyes. The doctor offered him a small flashlight and he took it, shining the light into the blown pupil. 

“Based on the pallor and facial expression, I initially suspected asphyxiation but there are no sign of peticial hemorrhaging or ligature marks to the neck or chest,” the pathologist said. Jack was suddenly very glad he’d watched so many crime shows, he more or less knew what she was saying. 

“I opened him up and that’s when I found the really weird part.” The pathologist pulled back the shroud farther, exposing an ugly ‘y’ shaped cut extending all the way down the man’s stomach to just above his crotch. The pathologist pulled open the cut as easily as if she were unwrapping a gift. It was too much. Jack had to look away.

“Bathroom’s down the hall, trash can’s by my desk, if you need it, Agent,” the pathologist said, sounding far too amused.

Jack took a deep breath. “I’ll be alright.”

“I’ll hurry along,” the pathologist said, just the barest hint of sympathy entering her flat tone.

Several upsetting and unpleasant noises followed and Jack shuddered, keeping his gaze firmly on the ground.

“You see . . .” the pathologist trailed off.

“Yes . . .” Koz said. Jack dared to look up. The corpse was open, its insides exposed. And they were black. Jack stared, disgusted, but unable to look away.

“Was his internal temperature quite low upon arrival?” Koz asked.

“Yes,” the pathologist replied. “That’s another strange thing. Rigor hadn’t set in but his temperature was as low as if he’d been dead for hours.”

Koz nodded. “I’ve seen this before,” he said, a smile coming to his face. “It’s a very, very rare breed of spider that occasionally gets brought in with produce from South America. One must’ve found it’s way to Lyon Park.”

The pathologist blinked in surprise, an amused smile crossing her lips. “A spider?” She asked.

“Yes,” Koz said quite cheerfully, considering he was standing over a corpse. “Its venom causes the body to lose control of its internal temperature. The blood flow slows until the victim’s body can no longer circulate oxygen.” He held up the case file’s folder as she looked at him skeptically. “Thank you for your work, but I don’t think we’ll need to extend this investigation. I know of an arachnologist who would love to collect a specimen. I’ll send him to the Lyon Park bridge to try and find it.”

Koz stripped the elastic gloves off his hands as the pathologist shook her head incredulously.

Jack remembered Koz’s reputation as ‘The X-Files Guy’. The poor pathologist probably thought she was getting caught in some alien cover-up.

“Alright,” she said. “I’ll put COD as toxic reaction to a spider bite.” She started to close the man up and Koz put the file back on her desk.

“Thank you for notifying me,” Koz said, gesturing for Jack to follow him out. Jack hurriedly pulled off his elastic gloves and tossed them in the trash after Koz’s. “Please call me if you see any more cases like this one,” Koz said.

The pathologist nodded as she replaced the shroud over the dead man. “Have a good day, agents.” 

As Jack and Koz ascended the stairs back to the main level, the echo of the rumbling gurney being shoved back into the drawer followed after them. The metal door was closed with a creak and a bang, and then all was quiet, but for the sounds of their footsteps.

*

“So that was nasty,” Jack said as soon as they got in the car.

Koz smiled and it was surprisingly tender. “I’m so proud of you for not throwing up,” he said.

Jack baulked. “I still might.”

Koz turned the keys in the ignition. “Well, let me know if you need me to pull over.” He backed out of his space and pulled out of the parking lot.

Jack let out a long breath and wiped the vapor rub from his nose. “So we’re going to see this spider guy friend of yours?”

Koz snorted. “Oh no, that was bullshit.”

Jack was surprised, both by Koz’s answer, and his swearing; he couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re saying there’s no South American spider that turns people’s insides black and cold?”

“No,” Koz said, the humor draining from his face. “That’s the communal lie hunters use when we encounter a Black Dog.”

Jack straightened in his seat, not liking Koz’s tone. “Bad news?” He asked.

“Yes,” Koz said. “Black Dogs are a type of shadow specter. There used to be a lot of wolves and stray dogs in Europe, and so these particular specters changed themselves to look less conspicuous at a distance. Up close, they look more like an upright shadow.”

“And they turn people’s insides black?”

“They drain the heat from their victims. The blood literally runs cold and the veins become frost bitten. Supposedly they look different when they’re about to eat you—which is why the victim had that look on his face.”

Jack’s gaze turned to the window. He watched the houses pass by as Koz drove through unfamiliar streets, feeling unsettled. A memory tugged at him. “You’ve mentioned Black Dogs before, haven’t you?”

“Probably,” Koz said as he pulled up to a stop sign. “I was hunting one when I got bitten by a werewolf.”

“Oh,” Jack nodded, vaguely remembering Koz telling the story as they traipsed through the woods. It seemed so long ago, but it had only been a few months. “So there’s no chance the Black Dog killed that girl from yesterday, right?”

“No,” Koz said thoughtfully. “A Black Dog isn’t capable of such an act.”

Jack nodded and bit his lip as Koz eased his vehicle across the street. “So . . . there’s two monsters on the loose in Claussen right now?”

Koz shrugged. “That’s not too unusual. A lot of monsters are nomadic to some extent, but many settle down in this area because of the forest. It’s a great place to hide and when they get hungry they can pop out and eat somebody.”

“What about the Thing in the Trees?” Jack asked.

Koz tapped his fingers on the steering wheel thoughtfully. “It hasn’t hunted outside the forest yet . . . it might not have adapted to hunting in towns and cities . . . that shortens my list a little!”

He sobered. “The Black Dog is suspicious though,” he said. “Black Dogs are summoned into existence. This one could have gotten loose from its summoner, but I find it a little too convenient that the summoning ritual requires the heart of a virgin and that young woman had her heart so neatly cut out.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

“One thing at a time,” Jack said, feeling slightly overwhelmed. “What do we do about a Black Dog?”

“We’ll need to get some supplies,” Koz said. “Black Dogs are dangerous—but they can’t hunt often. Right now it’s probably hiding in the forest, resting up for its next meal.”

“Can you track it by scent?”

Koz shook his head. “I couldn’t get much from the victim’s body. It might not have a scent, since it’s a specter. We’ll have to go to the location after we’re armed and track its footprints.”

Jack threw up his hands in dismay. “It doesn’t have a scent but it leaves footprints?”

Koz let out a bark of a laugh. “You and I transform into wolves based on how much sunlight is reflected off the moon. It’s magic! It doesn’t have to make sense.”

*

Acquiring the right Black Dog hunting equipment turned out to be easier said than done. Apparently, the easiest way to kill a Black Dog was to spray it with holy water. They’d gotten several gallons and a few bottles from Mr. Qwerty, but now they were seeking a way to weaponize the holy water so they wouldn’t have to get too close to the Black Dog and risk dying. Naturally, this meant they’d gone to two dollar-stores and one thrift shop in search of a set of water guns.

Jack sat on the thrift store’s lumpy couches. He’d ditched the jacket and tie of his suit and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, but still he felt uncomfortable. But it was more than that, he was starting to feel a little nauseous and tired--and not the regular sort of tired, the bone-deep tiredness that came with sickness. He plucked at the strings of a ukulele he’d found among all the junk, until finally Koz returned, looking ruffled. 

“I can’t believe nobody has any water pistols,” he shook his head in disgust. “I know they’re out of season, but still! We might have to try Wal-Mart,” he said. “But not today—I want to check out the crime scene before it gets too dark out.”

“Okay,” Jack said, frowning. He’d almost managed to learn to play ‘Hot-Crossed-Buns’. He put the ukulele back where he’d found it and followed Koz from the store.

*

The man had died at a park just at the edge of campus, not a mile from Miss Rider’s house. A road stretched past the small plot, curving over a river and past a line of trees—the edge of the forest.

Yellow police lines criss-crossed the steep path leading down beneath the bridge. They both stooped to go beneath these and carried on.

“Eddy was found here,” Koz said as he lead Jack across the grass and down to the riverside. The bridge was cracked and covered in graffiti—most of it just hastily painted curse words. It certainly looked like the sort of place you would find a dead body.

They stepped into the shadow of the bridge. “Keep an eye out for trolls,” Koz said, his voice echoing off the low ceiling.

Jack opened his mouth to ask if Koz was being serious before he decided that he probably was. He glanced around with newfound wariness. He eyed a moss-covered boulder at the edge of the river suspiciously. Were real trolls like the trolls in Frozen? 

Koz knelt down. “Here we go,” he said.

Jack crouched to see what he was indicating. Koz gingerly held up half a leaf. It was a normal, brown leaf—but part of it had been torn away. The edge around this missing piece was black and crinkled.

“What does that mean?” Jack asked.

“This burning was likely caused by the Black Dog,” Koz said. “When it was hungry it walked here, sucking the life out of everything it touched.” He twirled the leaf-half between his fingers. “This leaf was probably still green before the Black Dog touched it.”

“So don’t let it touch you?”

“That would be inadvisable, yes.”

Jack stood up straight and looked out beyond the bridge. It was getting cool enough that the grass wasn’t perfectly green, but there was a faintly distinguishable trail of brown grass that was curled and twisted, some of it black and broken at the tips.

“So is that the way it came?” He asked.

Koz stood slowly. “Yes,” he said. “The trail before the kill is always more vivid—the trail after is trickier. When the Black Dog has eaten its fill it doesn’t leave marks like that.”

“Could it have crossed the river?” Jack asked.

Koz shook his head. “Specters can’t cross running water.”

Jack let out a huff. “Of course!” He should start writing these things down.

Koz started walking, following the riverbank in the opposite direction the Black Dog had come from. If he was following a trail, Jack couldn’t see it. Koz pulled two of the small bottles of holy water from his pockets and offered one out to Jack. “I doubt we’ll run into it, but just in case.”

Jack took it from him, opening the flip-top lid and holding the small bottle in both hands. He hoped Koz was right. He felt woefully unprepared for any sort of attack.

Koz followed the trail and Jack kept on his heels, glancing around nervously at every shifting shadow. It was getting on into late afternoon and while the trees here weren’t as tightly packed as they were around the cabin, they still cast long shadows that shifted as often as the wind blew.

Koz stopped and Jack nearly walked into him. Koz didn’t notice. He pointed at something in the mud at the river’s edge. “After a Black Dog has fed, its form is more physical. It doesn’t leave a burn trail, but see here? This is from a Black Dog.”

Jack looked down to see an enormous paw print. He remembered suddenly that Koz had been bitten while on a hunt for one of these things and that three experienced hunters had mistaken a werewolf’s prints for a Black Dog’s. Koz in his wolf form was so big--the Black Dog had to be at least chest-height—maybe larger.

Jack swallowed. Koz was walking again and Jack hurried to catch up, suddenly quite alarmed. “So on a scale of one to ten in terms of dangerousness—where would Black Dogs land?” He asked.

“We actually do have a scale,” Koz said. “It has five levels though—with five being the highest. Black Dogs are a three.”

Jack’s shoulders slumped. A median-level monster didn’t really tell him much. “Why?”

“Black Dogs can kill you instantly,” Koz said. “But that’s the only reason they rank higher. They need to be summoned into existence and they’re passive when they’re fed. They’re not even aggressive when they’re attacked—but they can hurt you unintentionally. They spend most of their time in a dormant state—so I wouldn’t worry that one’s going to pop out at us.”

Jack relaxed a fraction. “Okay.”

He fell silent as Koz followed the trail, occasionally pointing out broken branches or crushed tree leaves as evidence of the creature’s movements. Suddenly a thought occurred to him. “Koz,” he said. “What do werewolves rank on the scale?”

A slow smile spread across Koz’s face. “Well, they’re deadly at worst, contagious at best. They are aggressive, good hunters, fast and powerful, and they work in teams . . . So naturally they’re a five.”

Jack grinned. “Is it weird that that makes me feel kind of proud?”

Koz smiled ruefully. “A little,” he said. “Easy as it is to feel shame for what we are, I suppose we should allow ourselves a small amount of pride.”

Jack snorted. Sometimes Koz could be so . . . “So who would win in a fight—werewolves or Black Dogs?”

Koz laughed. “The scale judges how dangerous a creature is to a human. A werewolf couldn’t douse a Black Dog in holy water—so the Black Dog would win.”

Well, that was morbid, but now Jack had a new question. “So, in your professional opinion, who would win in a fight: Dracula or the Wolfman?”

The river had grown thinner now, dispersing into several small creeks. It hadn’t rained in a long while, so the creek water was low. They stepped over wobbly river-stones and dried grass, following the waterline until it was hardly more than a trickle.

Here the water disappeared into the earth and the creek ran dry.

“This is where the Black Dog crossed,” Koz said, leading the way over the dry riverbed. Jack followed. Immediately, a prickle went up his spine, his stomach turned, and goosebumps rose all over his arms. He stepped back, looking around wildly. He whirled to look at Koz and found him similarly rattled. “What’s happening?” He asked.

Koz’s shoulders were hunched, his eyes flitting around the darkening woods. “I’m not sure,” he said, “But I think . . . I think it’s the Black Dog. The only other time I’ve felt like this was when the White Wolf was around . . . “

Jack edge closer to him, clutching his bottle of holy water close to his chest. “I thought you said the Black Dog was dormant?” He asked.

“It probably is,” Koz said.

Jack swallowed. If their wolf senses were this haywire when the Black Dog was dormant, he couldn’t imagine how bad it’d be when it was awake.

“How do we find it?” Jack asked, shifting from foot to foot.

“Look for a shadow that’s darker than it should be,” Koz said. “It’ll be in an enclosed space and if you put your hand in it, it will feel unusually cold.”

Well, there was no way Jack was putting his hand in anything supernatural. Jack took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He stepped away from Koz’s side. It was unnerving searching for the Black Dog—like watching a horror movie where you know something is going to jump out but you keep waiting and waiting. Jack had watched enough movies to know that just when you let your guard down was usually when you got killed, so he purposefully forced himself to stay in a state of paranoia. As such, he was relieved when he looked in the hollow bough of a tree and found the inside was an unnatural pitch black.

“Koz!”

Koz hustled over from where he’d been searching. He took one look at the shadow and nodded. “That’s it.”

Jack edged back. “What should we do?” He asked. “Can we pour holy water down there and kill it now?”

Koz shook his head. “When it’s hibernating like this, it’s even less substantial than usual. We can’t touch it.” He fished a pocketknife from his jacket and cut into the tree trunk, carefully scratching a letter ‘J’.

“What’s ‘J’ for?” Jack asked.

“Jack!” Koz smiled. He pocketed the knife. “We used to put ‘X’ but kids would get curious thinking someone hid treasure.”

“Oh.” Smart actually.

Koz started back the way they’d come and Jack followed hesitantly. “You’re going to have to ride in the trunk,” Koz said. “I didn’t mean to stay out this late; you’ll probably transform before we get back.”

“Is it really safe to leave?” Jack asked.

“The Black Dog won’t be awake for a long while yet,” Koz said. “I’d give it a month, then we’ll have to start keeping tabs on it. This is good. We can focus on the Rider case. And when we do have to deal with the Black Dog, we’ll actually be better off in some way—when I hunted Black Dogs as a human, I didn’t have the er . . . animal instinct warning sense.”

“Let’s just call it what it is,” Jack chuckled. “It’s our spidey sense.”

***

While Jack and Koz had been off searching for the Black Dog, Nightlight and Katherine measured the newly acquired RV and tested to see how sharply it could turn. With this information they seemed confident they could find a path for the RV to leave the camping trail and move closer to the cabin. 

Koz sat back, Jack’s fluffy, lupine head resting on his lap, and listened as the two explained how they’d spent the afternoon measuring the distance between the trees using a spool of twine, a measuring tape, and a typographical map of the forest. They’d made little headway, but Katherine had created a to-scale map of the trees surrounding the cabin and had already determined the best pathways to continue on for the next day’s venture.

“Do you really think it will be able to turn between these trees though?” Koz asked, eyeing the map skeptically. 

It was then that Katherine, with a soft tap of her pencil, opened her mouth and revealed that she was in fact, incredibly smart. Koz hardly understood a word of the mathematical babble that came out of her mouth. Nightlight cackled at his expression. Koz made a mental note to never question the young woman after that. 

The next day the weather seemed to suddenly realize that, while it had been getting steadily colder, it hadn’t rained enough for fall. The sky switched continuously between light showers and tremendous thunderstorms. 

Nightlight and Katherine made rain ponchos out of trash bags and duct-tape and bravely set out to continue their map. Ombric remained in the cabin, lost in his work. He’d more or less finished the newest prototype of the cure, and his time was split between purifying this sample and making enough to distribute to all the other wolves he used as test subjects.

While the exiles kept themselves occupied, Jack and Koz went on the hunt. 

Jack tried not to fidget as Koz drove him to Miss Rider’s family home to talk to her parents. He didn’t feel well, but he’d already pegged that one on the upcoming full moon. He stared out the window, watching run-down houses and overgrown lots pass by. The view was made even drearier by the tremendous amount of rain coming down.

“Just remember,” Koz said, “to be tactful. When in doubt, let me do the questioning, but don’t be afraid to speak up if you need something clarified or elaborated. They aren’t the police, so they’re less likely to notice if you make any rookie mistakes. But tact is the most important thing. Remember: these people are grieving, if we push too much they’ll shut down or become too hostile to continue questioning.”

“Okay.” Jack nodded, silently resolving to not say anything.

Miss Rider’s parents lived in a small town just an hour from Claussen. Koz pulled into a gravel driveway next to a single-story house. Apparently, they were expected. Mr. Rider opened the front door and three outrageously fat Pomeranians poured out into the front yard. Despite the fact that all three of them had black ribbons tied in their hair, they skipped and barked through the grass, totally oblivious to the fact that they were supposed to be in mourning.

Koz and Jack got out of the car, instinctively ducking their heads against the rain. Jack expected to be mobbed by overweight puppies but instead the three dogs retreated to the shelter of their owner’s ankles, where they growled uncertainly.

“Morning officers,” Mr. Rider said, his smile pinched.

“Agents, honey. They’re FBI agents,” Mrs. Rider came up to the door, scooping up the three dogs in her meaty arms as easily as picking up laundry. “The detectives we spoke to the other day said you would be coming.”

“I’m Agent Farida,” Koz pulled out his badge as he spoke and Jack hurried to do the same with his newly acquired fake ID. “We’d just like to ask you a few questions. May we come in?”

Mr. Rider nodded and the two led the way into their home.

The house smelled strongly of dogs and incense. It was intense even for Jack and a look out of the corner of his eye caught the subtle clench of Koz’s jaw—the only sign he gave that he was currently being stabbed through the nose by the pungent stench.

The Rider’s living room was stuffed full of couches, though there was no television in sight. Jack and Koz sat on a floral print loveseat facing a wall absolutely covered in crosses. They were lucky they were werewolves and not vampires, Jack thought. That many crucifixes had to be some serious monster repellant.

Mr. Rider sat on a chair opposite the two of them, while Mrs. Rider took a loveseat next to him. She was a wide woman—wide enough that the three overweight Pomeranians fit comfortably on her lap. They all watched Jack and Koz carefully, growling whenever one of them moved.

“I’m sorry about the girls,” Mrs. Rider said. “They’re usually more friendly.”

“That’s perfectly all right,” Koz said, taking a pad of paper and a pen from his breast pocket. “I see you collect crosses,” Koz started in. “Which parish do you belong to?”

Jack was surprised by the opening question, but he supposed it would be awkward to bring out the heavy stuff first.

Mrs. Rider starting talking about My Lady of Whatever Church and how great it was. The dogs continued to growl at every move they made while Mr. Rider stared off in space, his face pensive. Jack had little more to do than focus on how cold and nauseous he felt. He hoped they could leave soon. 

Jack looked at Koz and realized he was actually taking notes on what the lady was blathering on about: ‘My Lady of Mercy’, ‘Reverend John Hammond,’ ‘Eleanor Hammond—friend’. Koz was taking her words quite seriously.

As discreetly as he could, Jack pulled out his own pen and notepad.

Koz carried on, asking about Miss Rider’s mission trip group, friends, and so on. Jack tried to pay attention, but it was awfully dull.

“Did Samantha have a boyfriend?” Koz asked.

“No,” Mrs. Rider said quickly. “She was in the Chastity Club.”

Jack felt the Riders weren’t the sort of people to remind that having a boyfriend and staying abstinent weren’t mutually exclusive. He looked to Mr. Rider as Koz asked Mrs. Rider about the Chastity Club. Mr. Rider’s face was more drawn than before.

“Did Samantha ever tell you about any enemies?” Koz asked.

Mrs. Rider’s face paled as her eyes grew watery. “No.” 

“No one she was arguing with? No long-standing disagreements?”

“No,” Mrs. Rider said in a teary voice.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Rider, I only have one last question: was anyone bothering Samantha? It could’ve been as serious as someone following her, or as innocent as someone in class annoying her.”

Mrs. Rider shook her head. Mr. Rider’s face crumpled as though he were suddenly pained. Jack glanced at Koz and found him watching Mrs. Rider. He swallowed. Koz had told him to speak up hadn’t he?

“Mr. Rider,” he said, trying to ignore how this startled Koz and Mrs. Rider. “Did Samantha ever tell you that someone was bothering her?”

Mr. Rider’s face pinched even further if that were possible. He took a long moment to respond, as though debating whether or not to answer. Unfortunately, the longer he hesitated, the more upset Mrs. Rider appeared until finally he must have decided there was no way he could deny knowing anything after such a pregnant pause. “I’m sorry, Mary,” he said quietly.

Mrs. Rider’s lips were white, they were pressed so tightly together. She looked like she was going to throttle him or burst into tears. Jack glanced between the two of them, anxiously.

Mr. Rider spoke in a rush: “Sam got kicked out of the Chastity Club.”

“What?” Mrs. Rider burst. The Pomeranians seemed to sense a change in the Force and all jumped off her lap in time for her to shift in her seat and glare at her husband. “How? She didn’t—“

“She started dating someone—“

Mrs. Rider’s hand grasped at her chest and her expression would have been almost comically scandalized if there weren’t real tears in her eyes. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

Mr. Rider crossed his arms over his chest. “She knew how upset you’d be.”

“Of course I’m upset! It’s a Chastity Club—not a dating service!” 

 

The dogs retreated from the room. Jack and Koz might as well have not existed.

“She wanted to find someone with similar values to hers!”

Jack glanced to Koz uncertainly. Koz spoke calmly, but loudly enough to cut between the argument: “What do you know about this boyfriend?”

Mr. Rider ignored his wife, turning his gaze from Koz to Jack and back again. “It was someone from the club. With similar values toward chastity. But the club leader, Eleanor Hammond—she’s been friends with Sam since they were little and they’d carpool with this guy—she had a problem with him, so they both got kicked out.”

“What problem?” Koz asked.

“Sam didn’t say, but she was very upset about it. I guess they had a big fight.” Mr. Rider shook his head. “But Eleanor never would’ve done something like this. Maybe you can ask her about Sam’s boyfriend though.”

Koz nodded. “I will, thank you.” He stood and Jack followed suit. 

“Agent,” Mrs. Rider said. “If you’re here . . . we thought this meant that Samantha was . . . killed by a serial killer.”

“I’m sorry,” Koz said quietly, “but this early in the investigation, we can’t say what happened. I’ll contact you if I have more questions.”

***

Jack closed the car door behind him. The rain beat down noisily on the vehicle’s roof, but at least it was dry inside. Koz had his notepad out in a second and was scribbling away.

“I’m putting down the parents as a soft maybe,” Koz said.

“Why?” Jack asked, utterly bewildered.

“There’s obviously at least some tension in the family if the daughter is keeping secrets from her mother.”

Jack snorted. “Kids don’t tell their parents everything.”

“I said it was a ‘soft maybe’, didn’t I?”

“But—“ Jack sought for the right phrasing. “They’re super Christian obviously. Wouldn’t it break the rules to sacrifice your daughter’s virgin heart and summon a . . .” He waved his hands. “ . . . Demonic creature?”

Koz’s brow darkened. “You’d be surprised what people can make excuses for. I knew of a devout Christian farming community that raised daughters specifically for the purpose of sacrificing them to ensure a good harvest.”

Jack stared. “That’s messed up. What did you do?”

“Turned them over to the police along with a mountain of evidence,” Koz said. “The police just thought they were some crazed cult and they all got locked away.”

Jack shook his head in disbelief. The weariness he’d been putting off all day was starting to hit hard. He felt as exhausted as if he’d spent the whole day at a track meet. He wished he weren’t wearing this monkey suit or he’d be able to curl up and nap. “Do you have any nice hunting stories?”

Koz was quiet a long moment. “I could tell you how Bunny got his nickname.”

“Oh?”

“It involves him getting turned into a rabbit.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Spoiler alert!”

“Oh no,” Koz smirked, “trust me, the synopsis does not do it justice.”

***  
On a drizzly day like this, there was nothing Koz would’ve liked more than to curl up in bed with a hot cup of tea and not move the whole day. American weather had spoiled him. He used to be so accustomed to bad weather and now it just exhausted him. The approaching full moon didn’t help either. Jack had been transforming every night and he wasn’t sure about the exiles, but Koz was very likely going to change tonight as well. Koz was even feeling the daytime side effects: achy muscles, chills, and fatigue. But it was because the full moon was coming that Koz was rushing to wrap up this case. 

Jack was holding up well, but he’d fallen asleep halfway through one of Koz’s hunting stories. It was so unlike him that Koz didn’t even try to wake him until after he’d pulled into the parking lot at the Rider family parish.

The rain pattered down on the car’s roof and made the world outside the windows look murky and strange. Koz shook Jack’s shoulder gently until the young man’s eyelashes fluttered open. “Are you feeling up to another interview?” He asked. “Or would you like to stay and rest in the car?”

Jack shook his head and slowly sat up. “I’m fine,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Where are we?”

“My Lady of Mercy parish,” Koz said. 

Jack glared at the building over Koz’s shoulder. “I think I brought my dad to AA here once,” he grumbled. He sat up fully and straightened his suit. 

Koz nearly reached across and straightened his tie, but thought better of it. Instead, he turned to look at the building at the edge of the car park. My Lady of Mercy was a drab, off-white building with tall windows and a roof in desperate need of repair. As Koz watched, a white vehicle pulled up to the curb in front of the church and parked. An older man got out of the driver’s seat and a girl around Jack’s age stepped out of the passenger’s side. “That must be Reverend Hammond and his daughter,” Koz said.

“Who are we interviewing first?” Jack said.

“We’ll talk to both of them at the same time. I’ll let you take one of them.”

“What?! “ Jack woke up fully at that. “Are you sure?”

“You’ll learn on the job,” Koz said, reaching out a hand. “Give me your notebook and I’ll write down some questions you could ask, but don’t be afraid to make some up. Take notes--names, places, times, and how they react to your questions. If there’s anything we think of later--we can call them.”

“Okay . . .” Jack said hesitantly. He pulled the notebook from his breast pocket and handed it over.

“You’ll interview the reverend,” Koz said, producing a pen from his own pocket.

“Wha—the old one? But the girl is my age. And the reverend is, y’know, a reverend! What if he like . . . smells the gay in me?”

Koz didn’t lift his gaze from the notebook as he scribbled down questions. “The girl was closer to our victim. She’ll likely have more pertinent information.” 

Jack’s shoulders sagged. “Right.”

***

Reverend Hammond was in his late fifties to early sixties, with salt and pepper hair and pronounced wrinkles. His daughter was needle thin with a dark, curly bob and a small, pinched mouth like her father’s.

Koz felt Jack straighten his back as Koz called out: “Reverend Hammond?”

The reverend turned in surprise, a box of books in his arms as his daughter stood next to him, shielding him with an umbrella.

“Sorry to come on short notice,” Koz said. “I’m Agent Farida, this is my partner Agent Annie. We have some questions about the late Miss Rider.”

The reverend and his daughter shared a look as he resettled the box on his hip. “Of course,” the reverend said. “This is my daughter, Eleanor,” he held out a hand to shake Koz and Jack’s.

Eleanor clasped the umbrella handle with both hands and eyed the two of them warily. “’Farida’?” She said, “that’s an interesting name. Is it Islamic?”

“Er,” Koz said, caught slightly off guard. It was his mother’s name, but if he said that he would give away that it was fake. “It’s Arabic,” he said.

“Ah, I see.” She smiled unconvincingly.

“How about we go inside?” The Reverend said, his smile much more pleasant, but equally forced. He ignored the look his daughter gave him and smiled brilliantly at Koz. “All are welcome in the house of God!”

Oh, great. They were those kind of people. Koz resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he smiled blandly. “That sounds perfect,” he said. Ignoring Jack’s questioning gaze. “If it’s alright, I’d like to talk to you, Miss Hammond, while my partner will speak with you, Reverend.”

The reverend glanced toward his daughter in some concern, but agreed. Koz shot Jack a reassuring look and saw the young man, smelling of anxiety, silently brace himself. With a mask of confidence and professionalism in place, Jack didn’t even notice Koz’s gaze on him, he simply followed the reverend, taking long strides so he could move ahead of the older man and open doors for him.

Koz looked back to Eleanor to find her watching him with thinly-veiled hostility. It remained to be seen whether or not sending Jack with the reverend and not pairing him with Eleanor would turn out to be a good idea, but so far it was not looking good.

***

The reverend lead Jack down a flight of stairs to a large, open room. For a moment, Jack wondered if he was setting up for one of the AA meetings his father had stopped going to, but then the reverend spoke: 

“I’m hosting the men’s Bible Study at six,” he said. “Is it alright if I do some of the set-up? I’m running behind.”

“That’s fine,” Jack said before he could wonder if it actually was. He’d ask Koz later. “This won’t take that long,” Jack said. He pulled his notepad from his breast pocket and tried to look like he wasn’t reading questions written down by someone else.

“Could you tell me a little bit about your relationship with Miss Rider?”

The Reverend slowed his actions, the lines on his face lengthening as he frowned. “I’ve known the Riders for years,” he said. “Our daughters grew up together. They were best friends.”

Jack wasn’t sure if that was worth writing down, but he scribbled madly to get it all. “Do you know anyone who had an issue with her?”

The reverend was quiet a long moment and Jack wondered if he was just thinking it over or if he should reiterate the question.

“Sam was fighting with Eleanor,” the Reverend said. He looked Jack in the eye and spoke firmly. “She wouldn’t have hurt her. I just want to answer your question honestly.”

The next thing Koz had written in his notes was ‘who would Sam have turned to if she had a problem?’ But Jack felt this might be one of those instances where he’d need to adlib. “What were they fighting about?”

The reverend frowned in obvious discomfort. For an instant, Jack nearly apologized and changed the subject, before he remembered he was supposed to be questioning this guy. He clenched his jaw and kept his posture straight in an unconscious effort to emulate Koz.

It must’ve worked for the reverend started to explain: “Sam was seeing a young man who was . . . into questionable pursuits.”

Jack frowned. “Like drugs?”

The man shook his head. “Like . . . witchcraft.”

Jack nodded because yeah, witchcraft sounded plausible, but then he realized that probably wasn’t the correct response. He raised his eyebrows. “Wow, witchcraft?” He winced, hoping the reverend didn’t notice how unprofessional that had sounded.

The reverend didn’t seem to notice. He nodded. “El told me about it. He had this pelt he used for Pagan rituals. She may exaggerate, but she doesn’t lie.”

Jack hurried to scribble this down. “Did Sam know about this?”

The reverend nodded.

Jack remembered how Koz had suspected the parents. Did they know? “What about her parents?” 

The reverend shook his head. “It would’ve destroyed them to know Sam was willingly involving herself with someone like that. We decided not to tell them. At first, anyway.”

Jack frowned. That didn’t sound like a good call at all! His thoughts must’ve shown on his face. The color rose in the reverend’s cheeks. “I realize now this was wrong,” he said in a shaky voice. “I just thought that El and I could correct the situation without complicating things. As I told the other detectives, I went to her apartment the night she died.” He let out a long, shaky breath, face pinched in sorrow. “She told me that she was going to break up with him—she made me leave because he was coming over.” The man paused. He stared down at the Bible in his hands. “I suspected he might have been the one to kill her,” he said thickly. “But when I heard she . . . passed so unnaturally. I knew it must have been him.”

“The boyfriend?” Jack asked, unsure if he wanted to hear the answer.

The reverend’s hands tightened on his Bible. He looked up at Jack with hollow eyes and said: “The devil. He worked through that boy to corrupt Sam to wickedness and then when he had her in his clutches, he snuffed out her life and claimed her soul.”

Jack couldn’t decide if that sounded creepy or crazy. He settled on ‘disturbing’. And then he dutifully wrote it down.

***

Eleanor led Koz through a set of doors into a hallway. This must’ve been a Sunday school judging by all the happy, smiling caterpillars painted along the walls. They walked past doors covered in glitter and glue-covered crosses and bulletin boards bearing information on mission trips, faith-based lock-ins, and Vacation Bible School.

Eleanor lead him into a classroom intended for older students judging by the shift away from cutesy caterpillars to posters promoting abstinence.

“I’ve got to set up,” Eleanor said shortly. “You can ask your questions while I get ready.”

“That’s fine,” Koz said with purposeful pleasantness.

Eleanor started unstacking chairs from the back wall; a firm frown on her face.

“So I heard you were close to Samantha?”

Eleanor began arranging the chairs in a circle, not looking up at Koz. “We were.”

Koz took a step out of her way as she set a chair just next to him. “You were in club together?”

“We were.” The stacked chairs groaned and clattered as they were separated and Eleanor carried two of them to place next to the others.

“But she started dating one of the other club members and that’s against the rules?” Koz asked. 

“No,” Eleanor’s façade crumbled as she glared at him. “We don’t discourage pure relationships between club members. Samantha and her boyfriend got kicked out because they were practicing witchcraft.”

“Oh?” Koz’s eyebrows rose and he pulled out his notepad. “Could you tell me about it? How did you find out about the witchcraft?”

Eleanor seemed a little surprised that he accepted her answer so easily. “We went on a double date with her boyfriend and his roommate. When we picked up Samantha she had this animal skin. I took a history class on local indigenous cultures last semester and I knew it was from the Yoku tribe. They were all devil worshippers who cast evil spells on settlers until the settlers chased them west.”

Koz nodded, Eleanor’s version of the truth was skewed. He’d have to work around that. “And you know that her boyfriend was involved with this?”

“She brought it to give to him, but I wasn’t going to have anything to do with any of them after that.” 

Koz nodded as if sympathetic. “Samantha’s father knew about her boyfriend. Did he or Mrs. Rider know about this witchcraft business?” He asked.

Samantha shook her head and went back to putting out chairs, albeit slower than before. It seemed less like a tactic to put Koz off than it was something to keep herself grounded. “They didn’t know,” she said. “I wanted to tell them. She wasn’t listening to us, but my father wanted to convince her. I went to her house the day before she died but she just kept trying to tell me I was wrong and her boyfriend wasn’t like that and blah-blah-blah . . .” She slammed a chair down on the floor. “So I left. My father went to talk to her the next day. She was alive when I left, she was alive when he left.”

She straightened, her eyes roving the circle of chairs. “Her boyfriend definitely did it,” she said, crossing her arms and not meeting Koz’s eyes.

“What makes you think that?” Koz asked.

Eleanor looked at him like he was either stupid or crazy. “Because he was a witch and a devil-worshipper,” she said. “I knew something like this would happen. I wasn’t surprised when I heard . . . something unnatural happened to her.” Eleanor shook her head as if trying to shake off sympathy. Her expression hardened. “She deserved it, dealing with the devil like that. I’m sure it was God’s punishment.”

She walked around the chairs, putting distance between Koz and herself. “Sam’s boyfriend is named Gregory Keys and he lives in Collins—in the grad dorms.”

Koz quickly jotted this down.

“I have a women’s Bible Study group to conduct in ten minutes. They’ll start turning up any second,” Eleanor said. “You can see yourself out.”

“Yes, I can,” Koz said as pleasantly as he could. “If I think of any more questions, I’ll give you a call.”

Eleanor merely nodded in response, arms crossed, lips pursed. She had made it abundantly clear she didn’t want to talk to him, and Koz was happy to leave. He hoped if he had to call her later she would be a little more amenable, but he doubted it.

“Good day,” he said and slipped from the room, passing two casserole-wielding Bible Study attendees in the hall.

Jack was waiting for him at the door. He was standing quite straight, with his hands clasped behind his back, but the way he shifted on his feet gave away how uncomfortable he was. When he spotted Koz coming toward him, his shoulders sagged in visible relief.

“That bad, was it?” Koz asked as he approached.

“No, but I’m not sure I talked to him long enough,” Jack said. “You took longer.”

That was amazing considering how inhospitable Miss Hammond had been. “You’re still learning,” Koz said. “If you missed anything, we can call them or come back later. We can compare notes in the car.”

Koz led the way out of the church. The rain had lightened somewhat so they could walk calmly back to the car.

“Law and Order makes this look so much easier,” Jack said as he opened the passenger side door. “Just ‘dun-dun’ and boom, they’re there.”

“You should pay attention to those dates when they do that--a single case can take years to solve,” Koz said as he took his spot at the driver’s seat.

Jack stared at him. “This probably won’t take that long,” Koz said. “It’s the only case we’re working right now except for the Black Dog, and the trail’s still fresh . . . Figuratively.” The literal trail had been washed away with the rain.

“All right,” Jack said with a sigh. “Where to next?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It felt like it took my beta-reader forever to get through this, hopefully the next chapter will be faster.


	5. Rainy Nights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack groaned. His whole body ached, he was starving, and he was in a room full of naked people. ‘This is as close as I’m ever going to get to having an orgy,’ he thought bemusedly, ‘but Ombric’s here.’

The rain refused to let up. The river in the cavern beneath the cabin had swollen enough that they could hear it rushing by beneath them. Their electricity had never been better, but the satellite dish took enough of a beating that the television and internet were all but abandoned.

The water supply suffered as well, becoming muddier and muddier until they were forced to give up the tap water entirely. They drank bottled water and hung their clothes outside to wash in the rain. Then when the rain let up they’d bring the clothes inside and hang them near the fireplace—which was almost always burning by now, as it was the only way to heat the cabin.

Perhaps because of the dripping laundry and resulting water puddles, none of them noticed the leaky roof at first. Eventually, the leak grew to the point that Jack and Nightlight were forced to climb onto the roof and tie down a patchwork of tarps.

Koz could tell that Katherine would rather Nightlight didn’t, but the young man had grown significantly more coordinated and she had been making an effort to follow Jack’s advice and step back. In the end, Nightlight was perfectly fine. Jack, however, slipped and fell off the roof and managed to break two ribs.

He spent the rest of the day lying in bed grumbling about why werewolf healing powers couldn’t work faster and trying to play off how miserable he was. He failed. 

The teens bounced between teasing him and tending to him until finally Koz set them to work making supper while he gave Jack the tender attention the sad little bug needed, bringing him a mug of hot cocoa and the Season 1 Teen Wolf box set. As he settled in beside the young man, Koz pointedly ignored the looks the two teens shot him.

Besides the rain, they also had Jack’s wolf form to contend with. If Katherine was right and their transformed selves acted the way a person truly felt, then Jack was already feeling stir-crazy. He transformed every night leading up to the full moon and was excitable and hyper at the best of times and destructive and irritable at the worst.

Koz only put him outside once before he realized the only thing worse than a hyperactive werewolf was a wet and muddy, hyperactive werewolf. For a few hours each night, he’d simply take refuge by Ombric and his lab equipment—the only safe place—while Jack and the teens romped around the cabin, jumping on and off the bed, running through the hanging laundry, and playing tug of war and fetch with a towel that could only function from now on as a werewolf chew toy.

On occasion, Jack’s energy would change dramatically, shifting from excited to jumpy and anxious. Sometimes he would cower in a corner, refusing to sit or lie down, preferring to stand and whine pathetically. Other times he would try to burrow beneath the blankets, the table, once even Koz’s chair, crying softly and always inconsolable. In the morning when he changed back, he could never say why he’d been so nervous.

The exiles would occasionally remark on feelings of sudden anxiety themselves. Even Koz more than once felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He was starting to get an idea of why, but kept his thoughts to himself. If he was right, then they were in no danger, but letting them know his suspicions would only deepen their unease.

Finally it was Koz’s turn to change along with Jack. He wished he could have kept his wits about him, or he might have taken note if he felt any strange flashes of anxiety, but he barely remembered anything the next morning.

It was his and Katherine’s turn to wash laundry. The morning found them on the deck, both wearing jackets under their make-shift ponchos, washing their clothes in twin tubs of rain water.

Katherine cleaned the clothing in soapy water before handing them off to Koz. Koz then rinsed these and hung them on the line to drip off the worst of the water before they brought them back inside to dry near the fire.

The door to the cabin was ajar and the clinks and chimes of Ombric’s chemistry set and the aroma of breakfast leaked out onto the deck. Koz tried to ignore his growling stomach. He hadn’t eaten since his turning the previous night and he was starving. He distracted himself from his hunger by chatting with Katherine.

“You didn’t do anything too silly,” Katherine reassured him. “Jack got you to play for a little bit, but you mostly just followed me around while those two went wild.” She nodded back to the cabin where they’d left Nightlight to cheer up a slightly ill Jack by teaching him how to flip a pancake in a pan.

“I hope I didn’t bother you too much,” Koz said, hanging up a pair of trousers.

“You were a little bit whiney.” Katherine said in an apologetic voice. She dunked a jumper in the soapy water, scrubbing it against the side of the tub.

“Sorry,” Koz said.

“It’s not a problem!” Katherine said, handing him the jumper. “It happens usually when you’ve got something weighing on your mind.” She scrubbed a pair of jeans, not looking at him, but obviously expecting him to elaborate.

Koz suppressed a sigh as he finished rinsing the jumper and stood to hang it on the line.

“Are you worried about the lady who was murdered?” Katherine asked innocently.

Koz shook his head. He didn’t like discussing his issues at the best of times and he certainly didn’t like the thought of unloading his problems on a fifteen-year-old. He missed Tooth. But even if she weren’t in contact with North, Sandy, and Bunny, he’d sent her a letter too. As far as Tooth knew, he was dead. And dead people don’t schedule therapy sessions.

“Are you worried about your old hunting friends?”

Koz snapped his head around to look at her. Katherine hardly seemed to notice. She focused on ringing the suds from the trousers. “I worry about my friends in Manny’s pack,” she said quietly. “I worry that something bad might happen to them and I’ll never see them again, and I’m worried that they’ll all hate me for leaving, so even if I see them again, they won’t want anything to do with me.” She glanced Koz’s way. “I’m even worried some of them will see me as an enemy.” She handed him the jeans. He hesitated, wondering if he should quash this line of conversation. He took the article of clothing from her and set to rinsing them out.

“I’m not unfamiliar with such fears,” he admitted. But that wasn’t it. He grappled with whether or not he wanted to share more with her, and then with how much he was willing to share. Finally he spoke: “I had to leave my daughter.” He ignored Katherine’s surprise. “I was worried I might hurt her if I stayed.” He snorted sardonically. “I’m sure that must seem silly to you—Manny was under the impression that we should turn anyone we don’t want to kill—“

“No, I agree with you,” Katherine said, soaking one of Nightlight’s shirts with soapy water. “I wouldn’t have when I was little, just because I was raised as a lycan around other lycans.” Her words began quiet and slow, but picked up speed as she continued. “I saw humans as the enemy then, and didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way we lived. I actually thought my parents were lycans too and a hunter killed them. Things changed after I got older and Ombric explained what really happened to them . . . They were hunters, so Manny order for them to be killed . . . by Ombric.”

Koz lifted his head before he could think better of it. Katherine stopped scrubbing and raised her eyes to him, her expression unreadable. “That was Ombric’s initiation test. He felt so bad about it, he waited until the moon was full before attacking them, just so he wouldn’t remember it. He didn’t know they had a baby.” She shrugged and looked down at her work.

“After he told me that, I started to see how Manny could manipulate others into seeing things his way, and how he’d done it to me too. Then I met Nightlight and he’d lost so much. I realized that my life would’ve been completely different--and probably better--if it weren’t for lycanthropy.” She lifted her gaze once more, looking him squarely in the eye. “I know it probably doesn’t seem like it now, but this way, your daughter has a chance at a safe, normal life. You did the right thing.”

Five simple words, yet they might as well have been a canon ball, they hit Koz so hard. Even Jack hadn’t said so much, only reassured him that he wasn’t a bad person.

Koz looked at the ground, shell-shocked. He was dimly aware of Katherine ducking her head as she finished ringing out the t-shirt. She dropped it into his tub and the slight splash sobered him. “Thank you,” he said.

Katherine smiled uncertainly, a childish awkwardness returning to her face. She obviously didn’t know how big an impact her words had. Koz smiled, trying to express his gratitude when words wouldn’t come. “Thank you,” he said again.

Katherine was blushing by now. “You’re welcome,” she said. She looked to the ground a moment, then suddenly clapped her wet hands on her thighs and stood. “That’s the last of the laundry,” she said, tipping the soapy water over the deck stairs and setting the empty tub down at the bottom-most step. “I’m going to go make sure the boyfriends haven’t set the oven on fire.”

She offered him a last uncertain smile before heading back inside.

Koz sat there, listening to the rain pinging off the bottom of her empty tub, rattling on the trees, and clattering along the tarp over the roof. He felt a great many things, but amazingly, he felt better. He also felt guilty for feeling better, but it was a separate sort of shame from his usual guilt over leaving Seraphina behind. ‘You did the right thing’ was something he would never hear from his hunting companions—or anyone from his old life, but it was enough, better even, to hear it from Katherine, who knew firsthand what Seraphina’s life might have become if Koz had ever turned her. 

Koz felt raw, but in a pleasant way. It was peaceful out here, he realized. The rain was oddly relaxing—the perfect sort of weather for a calm day spent doing nothing. The clothes they’d washed hung on a line on either side of the deck ceiling, creating a curtain-like effect that rippled in the soft breeze. Even though he was outside, Koz felt secluded, safe. The sound was intense, but not irksome and the forest smelled like water and earth. The scent of breakfast wafted from cabin’s barely open doorway.

He inhaled deeply and slowly exhaled.

His hand reached into the tub’s chilly water and started rinsing the shirt Katherine had washed. When he was satisfied it was no longer slick with suds, he rang it empty of excess water and hung it to dry. The remaining water was dumped off the side of the porch, the tub set down on the ground next to Katherine’s.

He turned at a soft sound behind him.

Jack stood at the doorway, an uncertain smile on his face that strongly reminded Koz of Katherine. He wondered if she’d told Jack what she’d said. “Breakfast is ready,” he said. His hands were wrapped around a steaming mug. Jack’s lips quirked upward slightly, his smile becoming more sure. The kernel of warmth that had been slowly growing since Jack had arrived in his life burned brighter in his chest. Jack’s moments of confidence were incredibly attractive--he was only beginning to realize how much he loved them. 

Koz almost wanted to kiss him.

“I made tea,” Jack said, offering out the steaming mug.

Koz definitely wanted to kiss him.

Then it hit him that Katherine had referred to Jack and Nightlight as ‘the boyfriends’ which meant she thought the two of them were dating and Koz hadn’t even thought to correct her.

“I apologize if this just tastes like leaf water,” Jack said, handing him the mug. “If it does, Katherine will be partly to blame—she’s the one who showed me how to steep it.”

Koz flushed as he brought the mug to his lips, his eyes darting away from Jack’s face. Dating Jack, he thought, wouldn’t be so bad.

*

Samantha Rider’s secret boyfriend, Gregory Keys, was utterly ordinary-looking. And just a little obnoxious. Koz couldn’t help but wonder why she’d gone through so much trouble to continue dating him, but that was neither here nor there.

“Sam’s pastor said I shouldn’t come to the funeral,” Gregory Keys said viciously, standing with his back against his dorm room desk. “He said I’m a Pagan—a Pagan! Do you know what that means? A devil-worshipper!”

If Koz had time, he would’ve pointed out all the things wrong with that statement, but Jack was looking like a wilted flower, leaning heavily against the dorm room’s bunk bed. Koz had tried to get him to stay home—the full moon was only a night away after all. But Jack had insisted. Koz vowed to finish this quickly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Koz said, trying to keep his face pinched in sympathy. The room stank of weed and unwashed laundry; it would’ve been harder to keep a straight face than it was to look sympathetic.

Greg snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Just because they’re out of touch with their ancestral heritage doesn’t mean I should be!”

“Yes . . .” Koz glanced around the dorm room. Just as the Riders had covered their home in religious artifacts, Greg had covered his half of the room in Native American paraphernalia, ranging from jewelry and dream catchers to a war bonnet and a full coyote pelt, the underside painted with flakey colors. Koz figured this was the pelt Eleanor Hammond had mentioned.

“I’m one-eighth Cherokee,” Greg said proudly.

Koz resisted the urge to tell him that was the same proportion of his belongings that were of Cherokee origin. Greg had quite the eclectic collection. Koz’s eyes skimmed over the pelt and paused. He took a step toward the piece and stared hard. It couldn’t be real—they were so rare. But there was the binding spell. His eyes roamed over the pictures painted ages ago on the hide’s surface. To the untrained eye they looked like nothing more than stick-humans and stick-animals dancing around colorful chicken scratch, but even before becoming a hunter, Koz could tell a real from a fake. Jo had dived headfirst into the area’s indigenous folklore. She’d kept him up many a night; research propped up on her swollen belly as she lay beside him and gushed about her passion—including, but not limited to, skin-walker pelts. 

“What’s the story with this one?” He asked casually.

“It’s a Cherokee shaman headdress. Sam gave it to me,” Greg said. “She was one-sixteenth Cherokee. It belonged to her family, but they were going to sell it, so she let me have it.”

Either Greg was mistaken or the pelt was stolen—it was definitely a Yoku skin-walker pelt. Eleanor Hammond had been right about that much at least. Koz inhaled and the scent of half-decayed coyote met his sense. Just as Ombric had described. But if this boy didn’t even know the pelt wasn’t Cherokee, could he really know how to perform the ritual to use it?

Koz’s eyes roamed across the other side of the room. It was decorated sparsely. A few supernatural mystery books and vampire novels lined the bookshelf, with no less than ten potted plants stationed here and there and even hanging from the ceiling.

There was a pentagram on the wall made of bent twigs and twine. It was too generic to have much meaning, but Koz asked about it anyway.

“That’s Hank’s,” Greg said. “He’s like an eco-Goth. He’s in some environmental rights group. I think he made it himself.”

There was a click and the dorm room door opened to reveal a sallow-faced boy dressed in all black.

His one visible eye widened to see Jack and Koz there; a long, dark fringe obscured his other eye.

“Hey, Hank,” Greg said. “These are detectives—they’re here about Sam.”

Hank seemed to get over his surprise as he entered the room. “Didn’t the detectives already talk to you?” He asked.

“We’re from the FBI. Just ruling on whether or not this case matches another one across state lines,” Koz said. “I’m Agent Farida, this is my partner—“ Jack looked like he’d vomit if he had to speak for himself. “—Agent Annie. Did you know Miss Rider?”

Hank shrugged. “She really only talked to me to tell me how great God was and how I should come to church with her.” Hank eyed the wooden star. “We carpooled a couple times, she lived really close to the Co-op I’m moving to next year.”

Koz nodded. “Yes, Eleanor Hammond mentioned you used to carpool.”

The name had an instant effect on both boys.

“That girl was psycho,” Greg said. “She saw my shaman headdress and thought we were going to sacrifice her for some satanic ritual or something.”

“She told us we were going to Hell,” Hank added. He rolled his eyes. “She should talk, you should see her house—she just dumps her garbage all over her front lawn! It’s disgusting.”

“Greg said you’re in an environmental rights group,” Koz probed. “Is that what you’re studying?”

Hank shook his head. “I’m in nursing, he’s pre-med.” He jerked his head toward Greg, dark fringe fluttering.

Koz noticed Jack teetering slightly and spoke quickly. “I heard you were at Miss Rider’s house the night she died, Hank?”

“Yeah,” Hank said. “She was alive when I left though. She was super upset ‘cause her priest and that psycho, Eleanor, were threatening to tell her parents that she was a witch. Eleanor even stole the pelt to show them. Sam was really freaked.”

“Hang on,” Koz said. “Eleanor stole the pelt? That pelt?” He gestured to the pelt on the wall. “I thought Sam gave it to you?”

Greg paled, his mouth dropping open a second before he began speaking. “Um . . . well, Sam meant to give it to me, but the night she brought it was when Eleanor freaked out and she ended up keeping it. Then Eleanor took it . . .”

“And you got it back from Eleanor?”

Greg glanced over to Hank. Hank shook his head, tossing his fringe away from his face. “I was picking up trash with the Eco Guard—my group. I went to her house because I knew there was trash all over the lawn. I found the pelt and called Greg. He came and got it while I went back to cleaning.” He shot Greg a dirty look. “I wanted to bury it. It’s an animal’s skin.”

“I’m the one who took it from Eleanor’s yard,” Greg said nervously, ignoring Hank’s jab. “That doesn’t count as stealing does it? I mean, Eleanor stole it first and she just threw it out.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Koz said. “I’m just trying to get a picture of what happened. Hank, when did you find the pelt? Before or after seeing Miss Rider? And what time of day?”

Hank looked a little surprised that Koz was still asking him about the pelt—to him and Greg, Koz’s interest in the pelt must have seemed quite strange. “Um… I saw Sam first. And the time? I don’t know. The sun was starting to go down.” 

“Could you be more specific?”

Hank shrugged helplessly. “It was a few days ago. I wasn’t paying attention to the time.”

Well that was terrifically unhelpful. Sunset lasted for hours—and in the same time frame that the coroner believed Miss Rider had died.

Koz turned to Greg, raising an eyebrow and the young man shook his head. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Alright,” Koz said, trying not to let his disappointment show. “So Miss Hammond came over the day before Miss Rider died. She took the pelt to show to Miss Rider’s parents—do you know if she succeeded?”

Greg shook his head. “I don’t know. But if they knew, they hadn’t talked to Sam yet about it. She was still freaking out that Eleanor was going to tell them. She said her parents would kill her if they found out.” His eyes widened as he realized what he’d said. “I don’t mean—I mean . . . that’s what she said, but I don’t think they’d really do that.” He looked to his roommate. “I mean . . . I wouldn’t think so.”

Koz made a note of the timeline. Eleanor visited and stole the pelt. The next day, the Reverend visited, then Greg, then Sam died. Afterward, Hank and Greg found the pelt in Eleanor’s yard. Eleanor could have used the pelt, but she could also have given it to Mr. and Mrs. Rider and one or both of them could have used it and then thrown it into Eleanor’s garbage afterward. Greg could have done it—even his roommate could have done it, though he had the least amount of motive. The only one who seemed uninvolved with the pelt was Reverend Hammond.

“Uh . . . are you okay?”

Koz lifted his head from his notes to see Hank speaking to Jack. Jack looked . . . bad. Koz closed his notebook and slipped it into his breast pocket. They’d have to call it a day.

“Just . . . a little flu-y,” Jack said weakly.

Greg turned and grabbed something off his desk. He whirled around, wielding a can of Lysol. “I’ve got a unit test in two days, I cannot get sick,” he said, unleashing a spray in Jack’s direction.

“Greg!” Hank squawked.

Koz nearly gagged. The smell of Lysol was bad enough as a human, it was infinitely worse as a werewolf. “We’ll call if we have any more questions,” he wheezed. He took Jack by the elbow and lead him out of the room. Greg followed, sprayed Lysol in their wake while Hank loudly and quite shrilly complained about the effects of aerosols on the environment.

*

Jack wasn’t quite walking straight as they made their way down the dormitory steps. Koz kept a firm grip on his arm, afraid if he let go Jack would go toppling down the stairs. 

“Are you going to make it?” Koz asked.

“I can get to the car,” Jack said grimly. True to his word, Jack made it to their parking spot before vomiting on the pavement.

“Shit,” he groaned when he finally stopped heaving. “Should we clean it up or—“

“It’s a college town,” Koz said. “They’re quite used to it.” He helped Jack step around the mess and get into the passenger seat, leaving the door open just in case. He went around the other side and got in the driver’s seat. Jack just sat there, face white and breathing heavy.

Koz pulled a mashed up box of tissues from the glove compartment and offered one to Jack. “Do you want to get going or do you want to wait a moment?”

Jack swallowed, eyes closed. He held up a finger. “Wait,” he croaked. He took the Kleenex with shaking hands and wiped his mouth with a grimace. He waved a hand weakly. “Sort of blacked out there,” he slurred. “What are you thinking?”

“That we should get you home.”

Jack’s eyes opened. “I’ll throw up if you start driving,” he said. “Please talk about something else.”

Koz huffed, but obeyed none-the-less. “The coyote pelt on the wall is a magical artifact used for skin-walking. I think our culprit might’ve used it to transform and pull off the murder. It wouldn’t be necessary to summon the Black Dog--but it would ensure that no one would see a human coming and going from the scene.”

“So the boyfriend did it. It’s always the boyfriend, isn’t it?”

Koz sighed. “Sam’s parents owned the pelt so they’re not quite in the clear. Eleanor knew about it and knew it was connected to magic. Obviously the two boys have the easiest access, but Hank, the eco-fan wouldn’t touch it and Greg didn’t even know it wasn’t Cherokee, I doubt he’d know the ritual to use it. But there’s always the chance that one or more people are lying. For example: Eleanor didn’t say anything about stealing the pelt.”

Koz sighed and tapped his fingers on his leg. “We need to find someone who knew about the pelt, knew how to use it, had access to it, and had a motive to kill Miss Rider. And they would also need to know how to summon a Black Dog and have a motive to do so.

Jack shifted suddenly, leaning out of the car, he wretched.

With a frustrated sigh, Koz pushed his musings aside. Tomorrow was the first night of the full moon. They wouldn’t be investigating anything for the next three days at least.

Jack slumped back in his seat, sniffing. He offered Koz a shaky thumbs-up. “Ready to go home now,” he said.

Koz nodded and turned the engine over. “If you feel like you’re going to be sick again,” he said, “please let me know.”

*

Jack was miserably ill when the day of the full moon dawned, but unlike normal sick people who just want to stay in bed, Jack wanted to be sick and in the thick of things. Unfortunately, Koz was developing a bad habit: more and more often he gave in to Jack’s requests, even when he disagreed with them. So, when Jack insisted he tag along while Koz ran errands, he couldn’t turn him away. At least Jack seemed to have a high tolerance for discomfort . . . which was disconcerting.

Koz justified it by thinking that this was just to ensure wolf-Jack didn’t destroy the cabin in a fit of restlessness. None of them were planning on leaving the cabin for the next few days, so he might as well take Jack out for some last minute supplies and—for Jack—a vanilla milkshake.

That milkshake seemed far and away by the time afternoon arrived.

Koz was about to call it quits on his shoes. This was the fifth time his loafers had gotten stuck in the mud. Jack had already stripped off his shoes and socks and rolled up his slacks. Koz was reminded that the young man had been lost in the woods barefoot for the better part of a month: his feet were probably nothing but calluses. Koz had no such luck, but frustration was pushing him to abandon his shoes as well.

“What happened to you two?”

Koz looked up to see Katherine walking toward them. Like Jack, she’d gone barefoot, but unlike him, she was dressed for the weather, wearing a thick sweater under her homemade poncho. Nightlight appeared behind her, similarly dressed.

“We lost the car,” Jack said, flicking wet bangs from his face.

‘How?’ Nightlight signed.

“Mud goblin,” Jack said.

The two teens’ eyes widened. As one they looked to Koz for confirmation.

Koz sighed, almost too tired and frustrated to do this. He shook his head. “Bloody bastards,” he said. “Harmless, but they love to cause trouble.”

Katherine and Nightlight both glanced around the wet ground uncertainly.

Koz looked across at Jack to see him shoot Koz a tired, appreciative grin. It lifted Koz’s spirits somewhat.

Mud goblins was a much more impressive story than that the car had simply gotten stuck. After taking several turns pushing, pushing together, or hitting the gas pedal, the two of them certainly looked muddy and exhausted enough to make a goblin attack sound feasible. 

“I suppose we should start walking then?” Katherine asked.

Koz nodded. “Better safe than sorry.”

The teen’s map had led them farther and farther from the cabin, so Koz and Jack had dropped them off that morning—following the very path that Katherine had been mapping.

Now Koz was more than a little anxious that they wouldn’t make it home before nightfall. He wouldn’t have left that morning but they’d needed more food. The only good news was that Koz had been paranoid enough about the impending full moon that he’d insisted on an early start.

He was glad that they’d mostly gotten snack foods in preparation for the three days of illness coming for them; they at least were thoroughly wrapped and wouldn’t get wet.

Koz handed off one of his grocery bags to Nightlight while Katherine hunched over her map, shielding the pages from the rain with her body. After consulting the map, she lead the way toward the cabin.

After three days, the weather had successfully stripped most trees bare of their leaves, so the ground was half mud, half soggy dead leaves, with the occasional sharp stone or twig.

Every now and then someone would step on one of these with their bare feet and let out a yelp of profanity. If Koz were being a good adult, he might’ve put a stop to the foul language Katherine and Jack were using, but the third time he jabbed the bottom of his foot with a tree branch, he decided he didn’t care about being an adult.

The terrain was remarkably flat—but then Katherine had been including that in her calculations. It was a good thing too. They passed by the base of a hill and trudged through ankle-deep water rushing onward toward what was once a shallow wadi, but was now a small river.

 

“How was your day?” Jack asked in a mockingly cheerful tone.

Nightlight let out a heavy sigh by way of answer.

“Wet,” Katherine said. “I’m almost excited for the full moon. At least we can stay inside.”

Koz raised an eyebrow. “Does it get better over time? I can’t imagine looking forward to it.”

Katherine chuckled with an uncharacteristic darkness. “Yes, I’ve discussed this with the other girls in the troupe and we came to the conclusion that men are weak.”

The three boys fell silent, waiting to see if anyone of them would or could contest this. The silence stretched on and on until Nightlight started giggling—which just set Jack off. Soon all three of them were snickering like children with Katherine holding her head high, the smugness in her expression dampened by her barely contained laughter.

“Anyway—“ Koz started, which just set off Jack and Nightlight again. “Anyway,” he chuckled. “How good do you think our chances are that Ombric will have supper waiting for us?”

“Ombric gets pretty focused on his work,” Katherine said. “I’d say our chances are fifty-fifty.”

“At least if we get hungry, we have plenty of snacks to eat,” Jack said.

Katherine laughed. “And plenty of water!”

They carried on, throwing out jokes or curse words as they went. It was getting steadily darker, but the sky was so overcast that the only way they knew the sun hadn’t set was because none of them had transformed. But they were definitely getting close.

Jack grew quieter and quieter and his steps less and less steady. Finally he resorted to leaning on Koz as he walked. Koz would’ve offered to carry him, but he was feeling the night’s effects as well. His strength was dwindling, his neck was dual parts horrendously itchy and so achy, he could hardly keep his head up.

Jack slipped on the slick ground and grabbed Koz’s arm. Koz just barely managed to keep his knees from buckling.

It was like being drunk, but it wasn’t fun in the slightest.

In an instant, a warm hand clasped his and he looked up blearily at Katherine’s concerned face. She gently took the grocery bag he was carrying, while Nightlight crept up beside him and wordlessly put Koz’s arm over his shoulder, giving Katherine a look. She nodded and went over to Jack’s other side and put his arm around her shoulders so the four of them formed a chain.

“It’s not much farther,” she said as they started off again.

Koz felt an odd mix of humbled and touched.

Nightlight helped him maneuver around a slick patch of mud. “Thank you,” he said.

Nightlight’s hands were occupied holding the groceries or else keeping a firm grip on the back of Koz’s shirt so he wouldn’t topple into Jack. Instead of signing, the boy just smiled. Koz felt a flutter of fondness for the both of them. Much as he tried to maintain his distance, the exiles were growing on him. 

He started at a sudden flash of light. For a moment, Koz thought it was lightning, but it came from the ground. Katherine froze and their little chain slowed to a stop. “Someone’s there,” she said quietly.

The light flashed their way and Koz’s heart pounded. Was it a human? They were so close to the full moon!

Then a voice cried out: “Oh, thank goodness!”

The group all started in surprise and sagged with relief in nearly comedic unison.

Ombric came hobbling toward them, flashlight in hand and a trashbag artlessly draped over himself like an old woman’s shawl. “I thought maybe the car got stuck,” he croaked, “but I got so worried!”

“We’re fine, Ombric!” Katherine reassured him, unable to hide her relief.

Ombric let out a huff and started leading them toward the cabin, glancing back at them occasionally. “Next time, I don’t want any of you leaving on First Moon Day. Look at you! I’m sorry, Jack, and you too, Koz, I should’ve insisted on you staying—especially with the weather this bad!” And so on, until they reached the cabin.

Koz hadn’t realized how cold he was until he stepped inside the building and his skin prickled from the heat.

He dropped his shoes and socks by the door and hobbled toward the fire, towing Jack and Nightlight after him.

“Hurry up now,” Ombric scolded. “All of you get in dry clothes before you sit down.”

“I call the bathroom,” Katherine said, hauling Jack (and the rest of them after her) to the fire before she hurried to where the exiles had piled their belongings. Her actions were quick and jerky as she shivered, ducking into the bathroom with the swiftness of a deer.

Koz settled by the fire with the other two, too tired to care that he was soaking the floor.

The cabin smelled delicious. Ombric opened the oven and hauled out a casserole pan. “I turned off the oven before I left so this isn’t quite hot anymore but—“

‘Don’t care!’ Nightlight signed.

“Food.” Jack sat up stiffly, unintentionally reminding Koz very much of a zombie.

The bathroom door opened to reveal Katherine hastily hauling a sweater over her front. “I heard there’s food?”

Ombric had baked chicken and elbow macaroni in red sauce. It was not exactly elegant, but it was marginally warm, and it was food, so it was delicious. They polished off the whole pan. No sooner had Ombric set it in the sink to soak than Katherine excused herself and ducked into the bathroom once more. Nightlight scurried to the cabin door and kicked away the doorstop.

Jack—who had been leaning against Koz sleepily—suddenly seemed to remember what was going to happen. He shifted and began to strip without moving his achy joints too much. Koz followed suit.

He heard a belt buckle hit the floor and the thumping of clothing getting tossed in a corner. He was aware of the others stripping down around him, but felt a strange lack of embarrassment. He was glad Katherine had left though. He would definitely have felt weird stripping down in the presence of a fifteen-year-old girl.

Then the sun set and all thought vanished. Transforming under a full moon was not like changing normally. His consciousness didn’t take a back seat as his body changed and intelligence became too slippery a thing to keep hold of—under the full moon, one moment he was Koz and the next he was not.

***

Jack woke to Ombric crying out, “Avert your eyes, Katherine!”

Jack groaned. His whole body ached, he was starving, and he was in a room full of naked people. ‘This is as close as I’m ever going to get to having an orgy,’ he thought bemusedly, ‘but Ombric’s here.’

The thought sobered him into wakefulness, but he didn’t yet open his eyes.

“Avert--” Ombric started again.

“Ombric, please, we do this every month.”

“Didn’t Manny used to walk around naked anyway?” Koz spoke and that had Jack opening his eyes.

Jack was laying on his side on one half of the bed while Koz lay on the other. He was looking out the window, morning light highlighting the line of his neck and the smooth curve of his chest and abdomen. He’d pulled the blanket over his lap and Jack found himself weirdly disappointed.

“The Czar didn’t like to shred his clothing. He wasn’t naked all the time,” Ombric said.

Jack was distracted by the line of hair on Koz’s stomach leading down to--

Koz shot him a look that said he knew exactly what Jack was thinking. Nightlight giggled and Jack quickly looked down and saw Nightlight lying belly-down on the floor, grinning up at him with a knowing look on his face, as if his milk-white ass wasn’t exposed to the whole world.

Ombric turned on him, his gnarled hands over his eyes. “Nightlight, are you peeping?”

Katherine stalked past them and without thinking Jack looked at her, then quickly away again. Except for a pile of clothes held over her crotch, she too was quite naked. “Honestly,” she said, “I don’t think Manny cared half as much about saving his clothes as he liked to show off his huge--”

“Katherine!” Ombric shrieked.

“Ego.” Katherine finished as she closed the bathroom door behind her. “I was going to say ‘ego’.”

Katherine hadn’t been kidding with the ‘men are weak’ crack. Either she wasn’t suffering as much as the rest of them, or she was simply better at handling it and Jack was willing to bet it was the latter. She popped two ibuprofen, a tums, and a big glass of orange juice before the four of them had hardly gotten dressed. She whipped out a package of adhesive heating pads and slapped them on the backs of her knees and the insides of her elbows. She tossed the rest of the package in their general direction and got to work on their breakfast. In a moment, thick slices of ham were sizzling in a pan on the stove, filling the cabin with a delicious aroma.

Jack tried, he really did, but his limbs felt like lead and his movements were clumsy. He managed to pull on his boxers and then he flopped boneless back on the bed. Koz did just a little better, putting on pants and a shirt before he sat heavily at Jack’s side. Ombric and Nightlight managed to get up and stay up, bringing the coffee maker over to the bed, along with milk and creamer.

Katherine cooked up some eggs to go with their ham while Koz helped Jack put heating pads on his joints.

Jack felt simultaneously extremely hungry and extremely nauseous. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again he’d somehow gotten under a blanket. The Teen Wolf DVD menu was playing and Katherine was handing Ombric a plate loaded with eggs, ham, strawberries, and toast.

Jack sat up just as Koz did the same. Nightlight snickered and passed each of them a cup of coffee.

Only once everyone had their plates and the sleeping area had been thoroughly surrounded by dry food stuffs and medicine, did Katherine finally sit down. The soft groan she let out as she sank into her spot was the only indication she’d given all morning that she was suffering along with them.

After they sat down, none of them got up again except for the occasional bathroom break. They were all sick as dogs and the discomfort only grew as night drew closer, but they managed to get through the first half of the first season of Teen Wolf.

“Just think,” Katherine said as evening fell. “It could be so much worse—we could transform and have ugly eyebrows and huge sideburns.”

*

The temperature dropped that night and when they woke the next morning, it was in a very, very awkward pile.

Jack blinked sleepily as a slow smile spread across his face while Koz’s stomach coiled in dread. “So . . .” Jack said. “How did you sleep?”

“Whose butt is touching my butt?” Katherine said, sitting up behind Koz.

A flush burst across Koz’s face. “Mine . . .” He said weakly as Jack cackled.

There was a sudden thump and Nightlight rolled away from Katherine’s other side.

“Nightlight, where are you?”

Jack’s face paled. “If Nightlight’s over there, whose butt is touching my butt?”

Ombric sat up behind him. Now it was Jack’s turn to blanch while Koz snickered.

“Somehow I always thought waking up with a bunch of naked people would be a lot sexier than this,” Jack grumbled.

“At least you don’t have to feel like a dirty old man,” Koz said.

Katherine snorted as Nightlight rolled back toward her, smiling and looking at the ceiling as he offered her one of his t-shirts.

“If I get pregnant, I expect you to take responsibility,” Katherine teased as she pulled the shirt on, completely oblivious to the numerous, vivid colors parading across Koz’s face. Even Jack felt a little queasy. Could that sort of thing happen when they blacked out?

“Don’t worry Koz,” Ombric said, waving a hand dismissively. “That sort of thing could never happen—“

“Oh God, they don’t know,” Katherine whispered. “They haven’t noticed . . .”

“You see,” Ombric continued, “when we transform—“

“Here it comes.”

“We lose all sexual characteristics!”

***

The last night of the full moon came and went, leaving a heavy frost. They all awoke in a pile once more, the room freezing cold. 

After a weak breakfast, Koz eased Jack up onto the bed and wrapped him up in a blanket. Jack was still suffering the effects of the change worse than the rest of them, so Koz prepared him a slice of toast while the young man lay on the bed, thoroughly bundled up. Koz brought him the toast along with a glass of apple juice and started as the scent of anxiety met his senses.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, setting the glass and plate down on the floor. “Do you need a bucket?”

Jack wordlessly pointed to the window, his face pale. Koz looked and saw nothing at first. The iron bars? The glass? The window pane was lined with frost left over from the night before, leafy patterns swirled across the glass interrupted by . . . a handprint.

Koz reached under the mattress and grabbed the handgun hidden there. He stood up and peered through the window, looking for anything that didn’t belong.

“What’s wrong?” Ombric asked.

“We’ve had a guest,” Koz said, stalking to the other window and peering out. Still, he saw nothing. He could smell the others’ unease.

“The Black Dog?” Katherine asked.

“No . . .” Koz said, mind racing. What if a human had discovered them? Could some well-meaning park ranger be on his way here to free a bunch of wolves trapped in a cabin? Or worse—what if North or Bunny were coming?

Koz grabbed the cane they kept by the door to open it. They couldn’t touch the doorknob directly when it was closed and the mountain ash circle was complete—but they could touch it indirectly. Koz cracked the door open and then tossed the cane aside. 

He stepped out the door, gun drawn. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than a familiar stench met his senses.

He raised his weapon, checking both sides of the deck before he ventured farther out. He sniffed, eyeing the tree line.

“Koz?” Katherine called uncertainly.

Koz stepped back into the cabin and closed the door. He looked back to the Jack on the bed. Jack’s eyes were questioning. One look at Koz’s face seemed to confirm his suspicions; his face grew paler. “It can’t get in,” Koz reassured him. “The mountain ash keeps it out.”

“Keeps what out?” Katherine asked.

Koz turned to the exiles and saw the three of them watching him uneasily. ‘What was that smell?’ Nightlight signed.

Koz put the safety back on his weapon. “That,” he said. “Was the Thing in the Trees.”

*

It wasn’t until they’d put a whole week between them and the full moon that Koz allowed them all outside again. This was in part because he and Jack were still transforming at night, and partly because the Thing in the Trees had all of them spooked.

After confirming that none of the exiles could identify the creature’s scent, Koz gave them an order:

“From now on,” he said. “I don’t want anyone outside alone. No going out at night or in the late evening until I find this thing.”

“What about the RV trail?” Katherine asked.

“Until I know whether or not this thing is a threat to us, the trail will have to wait.”

The temperature had finally dropped far enough that most mornings found the puddles of leftover rainwater completely frozen. The afternoons were overcast, occasionally opening up to drop frozen rain on them. Still, it was dry enough that Koz, Jack, Nightlight, and Katherine could go out and dig the car out of the mud. 

The ground was hard and frozen, much easier to drive on than slick mud, but it still took the better part of the day to dig the car’s wheels free. When it was finally out, the four wolves gratefully hopped in the car, their faces and hands flushed with cold. Koz turned on the car’s heat and they took a moment to rest and warm themselves.

They’d just formed a tentative plan to drive to the RV trail and work on it during the daytime with all of them there watching over one another, when Koz’s phone rang.

“Agent Farida,” Koz said as he put the phone to his ear. The three passengers fell silent as he listened to the other end of the line. For a moment, his jaw slackened as his expression slipped into shock. In the next moment, he was back to normal. “Thank you,” he said, “I’ll be there in two hours.” He hung up and let out a long breath, looking almost irritated.

“Is it the Black Dog?” Jack asked.

Koz shook his head. “They’ve just found Eleanor Hammond’s body. Her heart was removed.”

Jack paled. “Oh.”

Koz tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. If he took the teens home they’d lose valuable time—they still had to get their disguises before they could go to the scene all the way in Claussen!

He looked up at the grey sky. There was no guarantee that it wouldn’t rain later, and if it did, he’d lose the trail and be set back to interviewing witnesses. He’d already gone and made an assumption about the situation being less dire that it was and now another girl had died. Besides which, if the hearts were being taken to summon a Black Dog, then that would mean the body count would only grow from here on.

“All right you lot,” he said, turning the engine over. “We’re going on a little field trip.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Something’s not right,” Koz said more evenly. “Stay behind me and stay together!”
> 
> While Katherine tried to tug free of his grip, Koz’s eyes quickly flashed from her to Jack and then behind him—
> 
> Shit, Jack forgot about Nightlight!
> 
> He whirled to see the teen’s pale shape loping toward them. 
> 
> For a second, Jack breathed a sigh of relief and then, suddenly, Nightlight’s feet left the ground. Time slowed down as Jack realized that Nightlight was being hauled up into the trees. He moved, as fast as if he’d heard the starting gun ring. He leapt and grabbed Nightlight’s ankles. Mud from the teen’s shoes splattered his front. He could distantly hear Koz and Katherine starting toward them. Nightlight thrashed in panic, kicking Jack’s chest. Jack hung on for all he was worth, grabbing for a hold on Nightlight’s wet jeans. His heart nearly stopped when Nightlight gave a huge jerk upward and Jack’s feet left the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE:
> 
> I'll post more info after the fic, but the short version is that I can't keep working on this fic unless I'm getting paid for it, so I'm moving it over to Patreon. This will be the last chapter available for free. For $1/month you can keep reading, and if I get enough supporters that I'm making $45/month I'll increase updates to 1 new chapter per month or every other month (depending on my beta's availability).
> 
> I'll post this link at the end of the chapter as well, but you can visit my Patreon here (please keep in mind you need to be 18+ to support me on Patreon since I create mostly nsfw content): https://www.patreon.com/AgathaHart

Police cars were just leaving as they pulled up in the minivan. Jack spotted a few raised eyebrows at the sight, but thanks to the tinted windows they were saved from answering awkward questions like: ‘Why did you bring two teenagers to a crime scene?’

Like Miss Rider, Eleanor lived on the very edge of campus, but instead of a run-down, single-story house, Eleanor lived in a run-down, two-story apartment. The building sat on a short hill, with a deck looking out over the small side-yard. Apparently, the students had decided that instead of carrying their trash to the dumpster farther behind the building, they’d simply throw all their garbage over the balcony. Piles of trash bags, loose bottles, and food remains formed a mountain at the edge of the tree line.

“How could anyone stand living next to that smell?” Katherine said from the back, one hand pressed to her nose.

“People can get used to anything,” Koz said, though even he had sour look on his face. “All right,” he stated. “Try not to attract any attention. Don’t leave the car.” He eyed the two in the back. “Behave yourselves.”

Katherine and Nightlight’s eye-rolls were so in-sync they could’ve been rehearsed.

Jack’s hair was freshly dyed and he was wearing another borrowed suit. He tried not to fidget with either too much as they walked up to the crime scene. Koz nudged him discreetly as he reached into his breast pocket and Jack hurried to follow suit. Mr. Qwerty (or rather, someone who supplied Mr. Qwerty) had recently finished Jack’s fake badge.

Jack and Koz flashed their fake IDs at the officer standing at the scene perimeter and were allowed through. Jack felt a rush of excitement—now that he was officially a fake FBI agent, he felt like a real hunter!

Then they stepped into Eleanor’s apartment and he saw the body.

It was startlingly matter of fact; it was as undramatic as a slab of meat fallen to the floor—but it had a face. And it was a face Jack had known, even if for only a very brief time. Just like Miss Rider, Eleanor had been eviscerated. Rubbery-looking organs were puddled across the floor next to her body, blood tacky as it dried in the heat. Suddenly, Jack’s moon sickness nausea came back with a vengeance.

“The coroner is ready to move her,” an officer said, approaching Koz.

“That’s all right,” Koz replied. “I’d like a moment to make some impressions and then the coroner can have her.”

Jack tried not to stare, but he also felt ashamed to look away. He compromised and watched Koz examine the area surrounding the body.

“Any footprints?” Koz asked as he tread carefully around the dried blood carpet.

“Just those paw prints,” the officer replied. “But we haven’t had a chance to look under her yet.”

Koz crouched beside Eleanor’s pale form and cocked his head to look into her open chest. “Heart taken through the abdomen,” he murmured.

“We didn’t specify the details of how the heart was removed in the papers. Looks like the same person as before,” the officer said.

Bloody paw prints littered the floor, leading up to the door, where smeared prints covered the frame and knob.

“Go ahead and move her,” Koz said, stepping back. “I’d like to hear the coroner’s report.”

Jack looked away as the coroner and a few uniformed people—EMTs?—came in to move the body. His eyes trailed across the room. A lumpy couch sagged against one wall, facing a small, old television set on a bookshelf. He glanced over the textbooks, knick-knacks, and photographs set on the shelves, chronicling a life just beginning. It was strange to think these things all held meaning to someone. Now that someone was dead, and the objects seemed dead too.

Koz cleared his throat to catch Jack’s attention, then gestured toward the door. He directed Jack toward the edge of the crime scene and then beyond its bounds.

“Are we going to see the boyfriend? He’s looking kind of guilty right now.” Jack said as they headed for the car.

Koz shook his head. “Tracking him down the human way will take time. He’s taken another heart so we can cautiously conclude that he means to summon another Black Dog. We need to find him before that happens. Koz unlocked the vehicle and opened the minivan’s trunk.

Katherine and Nightlight’s faces peeped over the backseat. “What’s going on?” Katherine asked.

Koz unzipped one of several duffle bags stashed in the trunk, revealing a collection of guns and other assorted weapons. “We’re going to track down our murderer,” Koz said.

‘Great!’ Nightlight knelt on his seat so they could see his sign.

“We’ve been a little bored,” Katherine said.

‘A lot bored!’ Nightlight added.

Koz pocketed a bottle of holy water and held a second in his hand. He looked up at them. “You’re not coming with us,” he said incredulously.

Nightlight and Katherine’s faces fell. ‘What?’ Nightlight signed, his expression giving away his disdain in place of a tone of voice.

“Why did you bring us along then?” Katherine asked.

“Because I didn’t have time to take you home,” Koz replied, handing Jack the second bottle of holy water, then a handgun. “Just as I don’t have time to argue with you now. Stay here, where it’s safe.” He shoved aside the other duffel bags and rummaged deep in the luggage compartment beneath the seats. Finally, he pulled out not one, but two hula hoops.

“If worse comes to worse, put these around your waists.” He offered the rings to the two baffled teens. “They’ve got salt in them, they’ll protect you against a Black Dog.”

Koz zipped his bag and reached for the trunk lid. “We’ll be right back. Behave yourselves.”

Katherine and Nightlight looked as indignant as any two teens holding neon pink hula hoops could. Then Koz closed the trunk, locked it, and turned to Jack with a grim smile. “Shall we?”

Jack cocked an eyebrow. “Hunters are a lot less gritty than I thought,” he said. “A lot of it seems to be . . . how to kill monsters using chewing gum and rainbow-colored toothpicks.”

Koz looked thoughtful a moment, a helpless smile creeping across his face. “I don’t know about rainbow toothpicks,” he said. “But a blue toothpick might be effective against goblins.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“No. Goblins abhore the color blue.”

*

Koz and Jack crept through the dusky forest. Jack remembered how unnerved he’d been by the slumbering Black Dog’s presence. He wasn’t feeling it now, but the very thought that their quarry might be right at the end of this trail, summoning a Black Dog at this very moment, was enough to make him clutch his bottle of holy water tightly to his chest. 

He caught a sign of movement out of the corner of his eye and nearly jumped out of his skin. He stood frozen, staring at where the movement had come from. Even as bare as the trees were getting, there was still too much shrubbery for him to say with certainty that there was anything there. And Koz was leaving him behind.

He hurried to catch up. Behind him, he thought he heard the ‘crunch-crunch’ of someone following after, but when he stopped and looked back, he found only the wind blowing dead leaves across the ground.

The air felt damp and cool and there was a threatening tone in the wind that promised more rain. They would have to find this guy before then, or his scent would be washed away.

They walked for nearly thirty minutes before the sun went down. Jack could only be glad his night-vision had kicked in, otherwise this would be significantly harder and much more frightening.

The sky was dark, the wind nearly howling, buffeting the trees so fiercely their branches rose and fell like waves on an ocean. Occasionally, Jack felt a pinprick as a tiny raindrop struck him. The sky rumbled overhead and Jack’s unease grew.

Then Koz stopped so suddenly Jack nearly walked into him.

“I think I know where our guy went,” Koz said, pointing ahead.

Jack looked over his shoulder and saw through the gloom, a building. It was large, with wide windows, and an expansive deck that looked out over the hillside, and bizarrely enough – a parking lot.

“What is that?” Jack asked, trying to keep his voice as low as he could with the wind snatching away all sound.

“One of the park’s Visitor Centers,” Koz replied, having to raise his voice over the wind. “For the Beluta Caves. I’ve come here with Ser—I’ve been here before. It should be closed down now though—they’re expanding the caves.”

They watched light flicker through the center’s huge windows. Jack swallowed hard and clenched the holy water to his chest. They were going to face a murderer! His heart pounded as Koz lead him down an incline, keeping to the thickest shrubbery and avoiding the lit parking lot and wooden walkways heading to the center.

Koz moved quickly, keeping low and quiet. Jack followed, not as low, fast, or quiet, but scared enough for the both of them—and that had to be worth something, right?

Koz stood straight at the Center’s front door, one hand on the door’s metal push bar, the other holding his gun at the ready, muzzle pointed upward.

Jack crouched on the other side of the doorframe and looked through the glass door. His night vision flared to life, revealing a reception area, complete with chairs, a magazine and brochure rack, and a shuttered service window. Next to the window was a narrow hallway lined in photographs. Beyond the hallway he could make out strange shapes and just the barest flicker of light.

Jack looked up at Koz who was watching him solemnly. “Stay behind me,” Koz spoke as quietly as could be, the wind nearly stealing his words. “Watch our backs.”

Jack nodded, heart racing.

Koz gently pressed the push bar so the metal barely made a sound. The hinges were another matter. The door let out a squeal and Koz froze.

They both waited a moment, barely breathing. When nobody appeared at the end of the hallway, Koz gestured for Jack to slip through.

Jack did so, scurrying to the desk window as quietly as he could. He stuffed the holy water into his pants’ pocket and pulled his handgun from its holster. He wished he knew how to use it better, but if anyone came around the corner, he was in the perfect spot to shoot them point-blank.

Koz slipped through the door, trying to close it behind him as quietly as he could—but with little success. He hurried to Jack’s side, putting himself between Jack and the hallway. With the door closed, the turmoil outside seemed a distant thing, just the dullest roar. It was dry, warm, and calm inside the center, but Jack would’ve much rather been out in the storm.

“Can you smell who it is?” Jack asked.

Koz shook his head, jaw clenched, speaking so low, Jack nearly had to distend his hearing to catch what he said: “Just smoke.” He glanced down the hallway and then turned back to Jack. “I’ll go first, wait for my signal, then follow.”

“Okay,” Jack said in an embarrassingly anxious whisper.

Koz moved suddenly and silently, ducking around the corner and out of sight. Jack waited a breath, then crept to the corner and peeked into the hallway. Koz crouched at the far end, gun held in both hands, pointed upward. Jack hurried to copy his stance.

Koz snuck a quick look around the corner of the main room and gestured with one hand for Jack to come to him.

Jack tip-toed as best he could, wincing at little tap of his shoes. He was still wearing the loafers from his Agent Annie disguise. Note for next time: change into sneakers when the game is afoot.

Koz scanned the next room before leaning back and nodding to Jack as if to say ‘go on and look’.

Hesitantly, Jack stepped forward and peaked around the corner into the Center’s main room.

The room had floor-to-ceiling windows on three of its walls. Somewhere on the other side of the room, a fire blazed, but Jack’s vision was obstructed by three rows of glass-lined shelves, covered in rocks, fossils, animal bones, feathers, nests and even a few taxidermied animals.

Jack swallowed.

Koz signed for Jack to watch their backs and lead the way down the line of shelves. He moved slowly and quietly, keeping low and taking frequent glances through the glass cases to try and spot their quarry.

Jack tried to follow suit, but instead of glancing ahead, he looked behind. He couldn’t help but feel like a sitting duck, but at the same time, if he were the one in the lead, he would’ve been much more frightened. He swallowed. Koz knew that. He resolved that one day he’d be good enough that Koz wouldn’t have to look out for him like this.

Koz moved silently, stalking to the end of the first line of shelves. He paused, carefully peering around to check the aisle between the first and second shelves before gesturing for Jack to follow. 

Jack joined him. Out in the main room, surrounded by windows, it was much noisier. More than any other sound, Jack could hear the leaves rattling across the ground outside and the branches groaning against the wind. He strained his hearing, trying to stretch his senses beyond the line of shelves.

Easier said than done. His hearing flew far beyond the windows and he flinched at the sudden howl of wind and the roar of trees. He took a deep breath and imagined a radio dial in his mind’s eye, turning the volume lower and lower. Gradually, the radius of his hearing shrank. Just in time too–no sooner had his hearing come back inside the building, than the roof began to rumble under the weight of heavy rain.

Jack watched their rear as Koz checked their front, but he saw nothing. No movement but the flicker of light and shadows. He forced himself to focus his sight on what was in front of him while he listened intently for something out of sight.

Beneath the noise of the roof, he could hear the crackle of the fire and then—creeeak-CLUNK!

He and Koz froze.

Someone had just come through the front door. Koz lifted his head--the only sign he’d heard the sound too before he ducked around the back end of the shelving unit, out of sight from the hallway entrance.

Jack paused a second, then followed after, the firelight briefly throwing his shadow across the floor before he ducked around to the other side.

Koz was stock-still. Through the assorted objects on the shelves Jack could just make out a shape moving from the doorway. But in addition to all the junk cluttering their view, the shelf’s glass casing reflected any glimmer of firelight that struck its surface, hiding the other side from view. Whoever was coming might very well be able to see them, while Jack and Koz were sitting blind.

Jack swallowed. He was reminded by his nearly hysterical mind of the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park. He certainly felt like he was on the verge of death by dinosaur.

He took a deep breath and expanded his hearing once more. He could hear a heartbeat other than his and Koz’s. Then another! Then another! He was barely prepared to handle one person!

His hands clenched around his weapon as one set of footsteps drew near.

His hearing went back to normal as he zeroed in on the approaching figure, just catching movement coming toward them along the other side of the case.

Jack’s finger itched to go over the trigger. Should they shoot through the glass? What if the other guys had a gun? He glanced to Koz.

His partner was breathing deeply through the nose—trying to catch their scent? Koz’s nose crinkled. The scent of woodsmoke must’ve been overpowering, even Jack could smell it.

His partner crouched and looked through the glass. Surprisingly, he looked at Jack and scowled, furious.

It was then that Nightlight popped his head around the shelf.

Jack jumped, his jaw dropping in outrage.

Nightlight at least had the sense of mind to look sheepish as he signed: ‘Can I help?’

‘No,’ Koz signed back with a sharp snap of his fingers.

Nightlight rolled his eyes and glanced behind himself. He started suddenly, stepping away from the shelter of the case as he signed the letter ‘K’ and pressed it to his heart—Katherine. It was then Jack remembered that he’d heard three people.

The hair rose along the back of his neck. He whirled in time to see someone drag Katherine bodily across the aisle and out of sight.

“Shit!” Jack cried, forgetting his earlier fear as he bolted from their hiding spot. His loafers skidded on the floor as he chased the two shadows out to the main deck. Koz ran hard on his heels and was first to raise his weapon. Jack tried to follow suit, but Nightlight tore past him and suddenly he was yanking on the back of the boy’s shirt and hauling him out of Koz’s line of fire.

Jack nearly threw Nightlight behind him and the boy whimpered.

Before them stood a man, his face obscured by the skin-walker pelt slung over his head and shoulders like a hood. The coyote skin’s shriveled eye-sockets bore into them coldly. One of his arms was tightly wrapped around Katherine’s middle, just under her chest. The other held a knife tightly to her throat. Katherine was breathing fast, standing on tip-toes to make up for the man’s height, neck craned back to avoid the blade.

For a moment they all stood frozen, shocked and frightened into silence. Koz spoke first: “Good evening,” he said in a pleasant but cautious tone.

The man tightened his grip on Katherine’s middle and she let out an uncomfortable squeak.

“Koz, the knife is silver,” she said with panicky quickness.

Jack glanced at Koz and saw his jaw tighten. His dark eyes glanced to the fire, then back to the skin-walker.

Jack’s eyes flicked down to the fireside and his stomach turned. They’d found Eleanor Hammond’s heart. It was laid out on a bloody rag on the edge of a pentagram painted on the floor. The fire was on another corner, with a bowl of water and a jar of dirt making up the other two sides. The fifth was empty.

“I can’t believe this,” Katherine moaned. “I’m sorry.” She blinked rapidly, eyes wet.

“It’s fine, Katherine,” Koz said. “Calm down. Let’s all calm down.” He lowered his weapon a fraction and inched forward.

“Stay back!” The man bellowed, taking several steps forward and forcing Koz to take a few back.

Jack lowered his gun. “Are you—“ fuck he couldn’t even remember his name! “—the boyfriend’s roommate?”

“Hank!” The man cried. His tone was shrill with outrage. He stepped forward, dragging Katherine along with him. She squirmed at the rough treatment. Between the blade and the arm squeezing the breath out of her, she could barely move.

“Right,” Koz said, keeping his tone professional but light. “You drove your roommate to both victim’s homes. You knew they were both virgins and you knew about the pelt because Eleanor Hammond told all of you just what it was. Or did you already know?”

Jack looked at Koz from the corner of his eye. Was he trying to get the guy to confess—to . . . to monologue? Like some dumb supervillain? Did people really do that?

“How did you know about the pelt?” Hank demanded.

“You’re not the first skin-walker I’ve met,” Koz said.

Hank seemed a little surprised by this, but he recovered quickly. “Maybe—but you have no idea what’s coming next!” He started for the pentagram’s empty corner, hauling Katherine along with him.

“You mean the Black Dog?” Koz asked.

Hank froze, head jerking to Koz so quickly his hood fell askew, finally revealing his face. He was definitely startled, but there was also a hint of manic alarm on his features.

“This isn’t my first time with those either,” Koz said. “I’ve already found the one you lost.”

Hank recoiled at that, but Koz didn’t stop. “I’m curious, who do you want to kill so badly that you’d sacrifice two others just for the chance to do so?”

Hank bristled. “First I’m going to start with the town council,” he spat. “Then the Parks Department!”

Jack’s mind raced, searching for an explanation. What was this guy talking about? Before he could stop himself, he blurted: “Why?” 

“Wh—they’re going to build a new visitors center and chop down over two dozen trees!”

There was a baffled pause, during which even Katherine gave the man a side-eyed look.

“You’re part of an environmental right’s group, aren’t you?” Koz asked. “The uh . . . “

“The Eco Guard!” Hank said, sounding almost excited as he jerked his head to the upper left.

Jack, Koz, and Nightlight all glanced up to see a flag haphazardly hung from the ceiling. In messy black paint someone had written ‘Eco Guard’ underneath a definitely traced image of the FireFox logo—with the fox replaced by a Black Dog.

“I’d already learned how to summon the Black Dog when I made the club,” Hank said. “I’d just never tried it out until those hacks in city hall decided to put in a new Center—do you know this forest is part of the migration pattern of an endangered species of bats? Nobody cares that they might not have anyplace to live when they pass through this fall!”

Jack noticed that Hank had slackened his grip on Katherine as he spoke. Apparently monologue-ing was a tried and true method for escape, even in real life! He glanced at Koz. He was out of his depth here, but Koz was in his element. He looked back at Hank and held his position, ready to stop Nightlight again if need be, but otherwise determined not to get in Koz’s way.

“Why did you choose Samantha and Eleanor?” Koz asked, edging just slightly closer to Hank and Katherine.

“They were disgusting!” Hank said, the excitement leaving his tone. “You saw their houses, they had no respect for the environment!”

Koz nodded, edging closer. “Yes, I saw the litter.”

“It was insane!” Hank said. He used the knife to gesture at the heart on the floor. Jack could see a sliver of relief enter Katherine’s eyes. 

“She was the worst!” Hank jabbed the knife at the bloodied organ. “She basically turned her yard into a scavenger buffet, then she had the nerve to lay out traps for them! I only picked Sam first so I could pin the blame on Greg.”

“What’d he do?” Jack asked before he remembered he was supposed to let Koz do the questioning.

Hank just shrugged, his grip slackening around Katherine’s middle. “I just needed someone to take the fall.”

Katherine seemed to realize that her captor’s grip had waivered along with his attention. She elbowed him hard and jerked away.

“Katherine, down!” Koz roared as he surged forward, gun up.

Katherine tried to do as he said, stumbling for the floor, but Hank grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her up again. Katherine shrieked as she was hauled back to her feet and Jack was momentarily distracted trying to keep Nightlight back and out of the line of fire.

The silver blade flashed in the firelight as Hank struggled to get a grip around Katherine’s waist. The blade came dangerously close to cutting her arm, but Hank was more concerned with getting a hold of his hostage than he was on hurting her. He had wrapped both arms around her midsection, when one hand landed firmly on her right breast.

This was apparently too much for Katherine. Her face turned beat red as she let out a vicious snarl. There was a tremendous ripping noise as Katherine burst into the change, brown fur exploding across her skin as her torn clothes fell away.

The knife clattered to the ground as Hank suddenly found his arms devoid of teenaged girl and full of furious wolf. He screamed and fell to his knees—or Jack thought he fell to his knees. He’d actually transformed into a coyote, which was . . . barely above knee-height.

Katherine turned on him and it was like watching a Rottweiler face off against a Chihuahua—except Chihuahuas know no fear. Hank bolted to the far corner of the room as fast as his four legs could carry him. Katherine cleared the distance in a single bound, nearly landing on top of him.

“No biting!” Koz snarled.

Katherine froze, tail drooping as she turned to cock her head at him.

Koz let out a sound that was either a laugh or an exasperated sigh. He approached the two, gun pointed evenly at Hank. “I’m much more open to shooting vermin than a human so I suggest you change back,” he said coldly.

In an instant Hank stood up on two legs. Somehow as he did, his fur reverted back to a pelt, but the transition was so quick and so smooth, Jack couldn’t see it.

“Take that off,” Koz demanded with a flick of his gun.

Hank yanked off the pelt and threw it away. Without the concealment of the pelt’s weathered face and dead eyes, Hank’s pasty skin, runny eye makeup, and tousled hair looked downright pathetic.

“Put your hands on your head and turn around,” Koz said.

Hank put his hands on his head, but hesitated to turn around, eying Katherine fearfully. She growled. Koz stepped forward and slightly between them. “Don’t mind her,” he said. “Turn around and keep your hands on your head.”

Hank seemed to refocus on Koz’s gun, and his hesitation evaporated. He turned around and held still as Koz patted down his sides and legs.

“Alright,” Koz said, flicking the safety back on his gun and putting it back in its holster. He pulled out a pair of handcuffs and cuffed Hank’s hands behind his back. He then sat him down and straightened. 

The whole thing seemed so . . . Cops. Jack felt almost silly for feeling anxious before. But now he had a new cause for concern: “What are you going to do with him?” Jack asked.

Koz reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellphone. “I’m going to call the police,” he said simply.

There was a pause. Jack dropped his arms to his sides. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Koz said.

That seemed tremendously anti-climactic, Jack thought. “Seriously?”

“There’s more than enough evidence here,” Koz said. “The bloody hearts right there. He’ll definitely go to jail.”

“What about when he gets out?” Jack said. “What if he tries this again?”

Koz looked thoughtful and nodded. He pulled out his gun once more, pressing it to Hank’s neck. Hank had seemingly lost all will to fight with the loss of his pelt. He whimpered. “Oh, please!” He keened. “Please don’t kill me.”

“Hush, I’m not going to kill you,” Koz spoke in a low, cold voice that sounded at once infinitely threatening and strangely intimate. “It’s good you’re afraid though, I want you to remember that feeling.” He leaned in close, taking all of Hank’s attention. “I’ve got a two strikes rule when hunting humans you see. If I catch you doing anything like this again, I’m going to let her have you.” He jerked his head toward Katherine. Right on cue, she snarled, revealing long, sharp fangs. “Do you understand?”

Hank nodded, his throat bobbing beneath the gun’s muzzle. Jack noticed that the safety was still on just as Koz pulled the weapon away and backed out of Hank’s space, holstering the gun once more.

He clicked his cell phone open and dialed the police.

Jack was impressed and just a little turned on. He looked away from where Koz was talking to the police chief over the phone. Katherine trotted over to where he and Nightlight stood, nails clicking on the floor. Her head was high, but her ears flicked back in irritation, still obviously indignant at the rough treatment she’d been through.

To both their surprise, Nightlight dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her neck. He buried his face in her ruff. Katherine blinked, green eyes flicking to Jack and then back to Nightlight. Slowly, her tail began to wag.

The police took Hank away and Koz took the pelt and swapped it with a knock-off Mr. Qwerty kept stored for just such an occasion before handing the fake over to the police. It seemed a little cheap to tamper with evidence, but given how much lying they had done already, Jack didn’t mind. Plus it meant that instead of it dry-rotting in an evidence locker, the pelt was given to a hunter from the Yoku tribe, who would make sure the spirit trapped in the pelt was respected and utilized only as it wished.

It was extremely late by the time they managed to extricate themselves from the crime scene. Jack was a little surprised when Koz suggested they celebrate, but he didn’t complain. If the exhausted Dairy Queen employees were curious as to why two slightly rumpled suited men were coming in just before closing to buy an ice cream cake, they kept their questions to themselves.

***  
With the skin-walker case closed and the Black Dog situation on hold, there was little else for Jack and Koz to do but help Katherine and Nightlight with the RV trail. Koz was still wary of the Thing in the Trees, but the atmosphere overall was relaxed. They spent most of the day arguing about the metric system versus the American measuring system. Apparently both Katherine and Nightlight were home-schooled by Ombric and had learned the metric system. From this subject, they meandered into a conversation about high school. Katherine had never attended and Nightlight hadn’t been in public school since he was eight.

“Is it like in the movies?” Katherine asked as she walked from one tree to another, pulling a line of thread behind her. “Do bullies steal your lunch money? Do people make out in the hallways? Is the food really awful?”

Jack looked up from his task, holding a piece of thread to one tree while Koz lead another trail. “No!” He said. Then he thought about it a moment. “Well, sort of.”

Koz reached the next tree and counted the marks Katherine had carefully noted along the length of twine. “Three point seven-five meters,” he said.

Katherine hurried to make a note of it on her journal. The map was massive now—so big it couldn’t fit on a single page. Instead Katherine had many pages with different sections. She’d laid them all out on the floor and tried to explain it to all of them once before, but frankly Jack thought only Ombric had understood it all. If he ever were asked to line-up the pages himself, he knew he’d never be able to do it. Nightlight and Koz must’ve felt the same, for they all let Katherine take the lead when it came to measuring and recording the map.

As she flicked through the journal to find the right page, a few loose leaves fell out and fluttered to the ground. Koz stepped forward and picked them up before she even stooped to get them. He glanced over the page for only a second before quirking an eyebrow.

On the upper corner, Jack could just see a ring of perfectly spaced dots, marking trees. Katherine noticed their gazes.

“Oh that place? That was so odd!” Katherine said. “The trees were exactly the same distance apart—and in a perfect circle!”

“Yes,” Koz said, “that’s a Druid circle, it’s a magical place with a naturally formed barrier that repels all who would do you harm.”

Now it was Katherine’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Really?” She asked, sounding severely doubtful.

Koz nodded. “We used it to stay safe when the Bennetts were hunting us. And it kept us safe from Manny.”

Katherine frowned, clearly not believing Koz, but not wanting to appear impolite by contradicting him. She and Ombric were more than willing to accept all manner of magical beasts, but any real magic they approached with extreme hesitancy. Still, she delicately wrote ‘Druid’s Circle’ in the center of the line of trees.

It was a cold, damp day. They’d off and on argued about whether or not it would snow or rain, but it was certainly going to do one of the two. The sky was overcast and the trees were almost entirely bare now. The overall effect was gloomy, but Jack was heartened by the thought that Ombric could be relied upon on cold, wet days to have a warm meal going for them by the time they got home.

The days were getting shorter and shorter. They’d have to get the RV to the cabin soon or the days wouldn’t be long enough to get to the end of the trail and do any work before they needed to head back—plus soon they’d be dealing with snow. Once they got the RV nearer to the cabin, they probably wouldn’t be able to move it again until spring.

“All right,” Koz said. “I think we should start back to the car now.”

On cue, a fat raindrop splattered onto Jack’s head. He jumped at how cold it was.

They started back to the car, a group misery settling over them as it began to rain in earnest. Unfortunately, in a fit of optimism, they’d left their homemade ponchos in the car.

It was the sort of cold rain that soaked you through to the bone. Some of it couldn’t even be called rain; it was sleet. Jack could see his breath pluming out with each exhale. He kept his head down, only occasionally daring to lift his gaze enough to make sure he wasn’t wandering from the group. He was shivering fiercely and from what he could see of his companions, they were faring no better.

Katherine didn’t dare take out her map—it was nicely sealed away in a zip-lock bag for situations just like this. Without the map, they were all relying on Koz’s sense of direction and mental memory of the area.

Jack was a little concerned that they wouldn’t be able to find their way to the car. He’d been lost in the woods before and didn’t care to repeat the experience.

“Help!”

The whole group froze at the cry. Jack looked to his companions. “Did anyone else hear that?” He shouted over the noise of the rain. Katherine turned to speak to him and then—

“Help me!”

They all froze again. The voice was a man’s, just a little raspy, just a little warbly. They were so, so far from the cabin, and yet it sounded just like—

“Ombric?” Katherine cried as Koz reached for his holster.

“Help!”

“Something doesn’t smell right—“ Koz barely got out the phrase before Katherine bolted.

Koz swore and tore after her, Jack and Nightlight hard on his heels.

“Ombric!” Katherine shouted. “Where are you?”

“Here!”

Katherine veered sharply to the left, following the voice; oblivious to Koz sliding and scrambling over the mud to stop her.

“Ombric! Say something!” She turned her head this way and that, sopping wet hair clinging to her face. She ran up a low incline, slipped, and was caught by Koz. He gripped her by the upper arm tightly, even as she tried to pull away.

“Ombric needs help!” She cried as if Koz might not have heard.

“Something’s not right,” Koz said more evenly. “Stay behind me and stay together!”

While Katherine tried to tug free of his grip, Koz’s eyes quickly flashed from her to Jack and then behind him—

Shit, Jack forgot about Nightlight!

He whirled to see the teen’s pale shape loping toward them. 

For a second, Jack breathed a sigh of relief and then, suddenly, Nightlight’s feet left the ground. Time slowed down as Jack realized that Nightlight was being hauled up into the trees. He moved, as fast as if he’d heard the starting gun ring. He leapt and grabbed Nightlight’s ankles. Mud from the teen’s shoes splattered his front. He could distantly hear Koz and Katherine starting toward them. Nightlight thrashed in panic, kicking Jack’s chest. Jack hung on for all he was worth, grabbing for a hold on Nightlight’s wet jeans. His heart nearly stopped when Nightlight gave a huge jerk upward and Jack’s feet left the ground.

Nightlight’s legs began to shake and swell. Jack yelped in alarm as he realized the young man was turning. There was a sickening crack and then Nightlight fell.

Jack landed hard, cold mud splattering around him. A second later, Nightlight—half-transformed—landed on top of him. For a moment, Jack had the wind knocked out of him. He opened his mouth, trying to inhale and failing. He looked up at the sky, raindrops falling onto his cheeks, and saw a shadow flit between the branches.

Nightlight rolled off of him just as Koz and Katherine reached them. Jack sucked in greedy gulps of air as Katherine knelt in the mud.

“Nini!” She cried, voice shrill with alarm.

“Jack?” Koz barked, weapon trained upward as he looked this way and that for the . . . the Thing in the Trees. “Jack, are you all right?”

Jack sat up. “I’m“--he croaked and coughed--“fine!”

“Good, we’re going to the Druid circle—get the kids up.”

The branches rustled with the weight of heavy raindrops. The wind and rain tore leaves and loose twigs from the trees and threw them to the ground. Everywhere there was noise and movement. 

Jack’s heart hammered in his chest. He hopped to his feet and grabbed Nightlight’s shoulders. “Nini?” He asked, giving the teen a little shake.

Nightlight was conscious, but his eyes didn’t focus on Jack, instead flicking this way and that. He was back in his human form, looking terribly small and young. Tears trembled at the corner of his lashes as his shoulders heaved with deep, panicky breaths.

Jack glanced up at Koz and back down to the teen. “Nightlight we gotta move!” He hauled the boy up by his arms.

“What about Ombric?” Katherine said from Nightlight’s other side. 

“It’s not safe here,” Koz said firmly.

Katherine whirled on him, fire in her eyes. “I’m not leaving Ombric!” She snarled.

Koz looked down at her a second and then, in one swift motion, knelt, swooped one arm behind her thighs, and stood, slinging Katherine over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Wh—“ Katherine sputtered, momentarily speechless with shock.

“Jack. Move. Now,” Koz said, taking off back the way they’d come.

Jack didn’t need to be told twice. He grabbed Nightlight by the upper arm and hauled him forward. For the first few paces, Jack was all but dragging him, but after a moment the boy remembered how to run and moved on his own. Still Jack had to clip his pace—he’d trained to excel in running—and his old leg wound had stopped fussing ever since he’d been bitten, but Nightlight had no such athletic skill. Jack kept a constant grip on his sleeve—he wouldn’t lose him again.

Ombric might’ve been in danger—but so were they, Jack reasoned to himself. They could come back for him after the pups were safe at the circle.

Katherine didn’t see it this way. “Put me down!” She snarled in outrage.

“Katherine please watch our backs—“ Koz said as if she weren’t hollering her head off and flailing against his back.

Miraculously, Katherine did lift her head, rainwater dripped down her chin and her hair clung to her face and neck.

“I don’t see anything!” She cried right before a branch swung down and struck Koz across the side of the head. There was a second where he teetered off balance with Katherine on his shoulder, then something grabbed the back of Katherine’s jeans and hauled her up into the trees.

Pain burst along the back of Jack’s neck and suddenly he was on all fours, stumbling as his clothes tangled his limbs before falling away; then he was gaining speed.

He leapt, long, spindly legs carrying him just high enough that his claws could scramble for purchase on the lower branches. The speed and rainwater left him blind and confused, but he was angry. His nose struck something fleshy and his lips parted. He snapped down—too late to catch anything but twigs and leaves. He was successful still—he fell back to the ground and Katherine fell with him.

She landed hard. Nightlight and Koz were on her in a moment. Koz scanned the trees for signs of their attacker, a gash on the side of his head bleeding freely. Jack circled around them, snarling and scenting the breeze. He’d caught the briefest flicker of a scent when his nose struck the Thing, but the rain covered up any trail he could follow.

He cocked an ear back to his companions and growled in frustration—he couldn’t understand what they were saying! But Katherine was talking at least.

“Please,” she whimpered. Jack understood the distress in her tone, but was more concerned about the wheezy quality of her breath. Definitely a few cracked ribs. “Please don’t leave Ombric—he’s all we’ve got!”

Nightlight helped her to her feet even as she shook her head, teeth grit and face pained.

“I have to keep you safe,” Koz said, not quite shouting, but loud and firm.

Katherine shook his head, face pale, and jaw set. She took a step back the way they’d come—back toward danger.

Jack whirled on her and roared, fur flaring up in spiky wet matts.

Katherine stumbled back into Nightlight. Nightlight grabbed her hand and tugged her away. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears as she gave Jack one last pleading look. He stared her down, tail raised in warning.

She caved first, tears falling from her eyes as she turned and allowed Nightlight to pull her away. She ran half-stooped, a hand over her side. Koz flanked the teens on one side while Jack covered the other, all senses trained for signs of pursuit.

A few times Jack heard the branches overhead shake as though something large were bounding between the boughs. He’d stop and snarl, stalking along the ground and glaring upward. He wasn’t frightened as a wolf. He was angry. This thing had preyed on the weakest of his pack. But now things were different. He was huge and he had sharp teeth. Nothing could hurt him. And there was the smell. The Thing had the same scent as Katherine--as Nightlight--and even, in brief flickers, Koz. Jack had come to realize what it was: the stink of fear.

*

Koz stopped what felt like hours later, but was likely only a few minutes. The rest of them ground to a halt, panting and dripping wet. “We’ll be safe here,” Koz said, looking around at the trees edging the circle, gasping for breath.

Nightlight immediately collapsed to his knees. Katherine clutched her side and bent at the waist, breathing deeply and wincing with each inhale. She stood at the very edge of the circle, looking out. Jack eyed her warily, ready to hop to and haul her back in if she bolted.

She straightened, her back to Jack. Nightlight coughed urgently and Jack whirled in time to see him wretch. His ear flicked back as he heard Katherine run from the circle.

“Katherine!” Koz cried, tearing after her and throwing an arm around her middle. “Stop!”

“Stay with Nightlight!” Katherine pleaded, voice heavy with tears as she struggled against his hold. “You can stay and I—I’ll get Ombric myself!”

“Katherine that thing is still out there!” Koz tried to pick her up again, but he jostled her broken bones and she flinched away with a sharp gasp. He nearly let her slip from his arms, concern etched across his features, before catching her again.

“You don’t know it’s still there!” She cried, trying to pull free.

Koz threw his gun away and locked his arms around her. “And you don’t know if Ombric is still there!” He snapped as he dragged her back into the circle.

Katherine froze, looking up at him with wide, frightened eyes. Koz looked back at her. He swallowed. There was a moment of silence and then Katherine sagged, pulling Koz down to the ground with her as she crumpled. He knelt beside her as she keened softly.

For a moment, Koz looked lost. His jaw clenched, he blinked rapidly. He loosened his lock hold on her and held her gently, rocking her ever so slightly.

Nightlight sniffed and Jack turned his attention on him. The boy was trembling from head to toe, though Jack couldn’t guess if it was from fear or the cold rain. His eyes were rimmed with red and his face was paler than usual. Jack nudged his cheek and got a good whiff of fear. He whined and bumped Nightlight’s side, pushing him to go sit by Katherine and Koz. 

The night passed with the four of them pressed together, seeking some measure of warmth against the cold that had settled in their bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's some more information about my Patreon and Patreon in general:
> 
> For those of you who don't know, Patreon is a subscription-based blogging platform. Basically I post art (and fic) there and people who pledge money to me can see them--the more money you pledge the more 'rewards' you get. You only need to pledge $1/month in order to read this fic, but $1 pledgers also can see sfw art, wips, and concept art, and get early viewing of art that's going to be posted publicly--including my webcomic, a gay fluff and smut story about two nerdy immortals, called Nightmare Boyfriend.
> 
> I update every other day and I have 124+ pieces already posted (most of them nsfw), so there's plenty to see and plenty more to come. As for what kinds of art you will see: My mission (yeah, I'm a porn artist with a mission statement) is to create 'positive porn': pornography that features consenting adults of all genders, sexes, sexualities, races, and body shapes having sex and--more importantly--having fun! So if your kink is non-con it might not be the most interesting place for you, but if you like smutty art featuring very enthusiastic participants you'll probably like it a lot. :)
> 
> How to sign up:
> 
> First you can go to my page: https://www.patreon.com/AgathaHart Check through the 'rewards' on the right side of my profile to see what goodies you earn depending on the size of your pledge. Once you know how much you want to pledge, just hit the big, orange 'Become a Patron' button. If you have an account it will prompt you how much you want to pledge and you can put in the amount--if you don't have an account, it'll prompt you to create one. It's pretty self-explanatory from there on, you can hook up your PayPal and then you're good to go! Let me know if you have any questions!
> 
> On another note: I am sorry to do this to you guys, but I'm going back to school and I really, really, really can't afford to work on unpaid projects. Rather than just ditch this fic (because it is sort've my baby at this point) I'd rather offer the readers a chance to save it. Thank you everyone who has followed me to this point, even if you can't continue with me going forward. I can't put into words how much it's meant to me to see you leave kudos and to respond to your comments, so from the bottom of my heart, I thank you so much for your support.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on my blog: guardian-of-da-gay.tumblr.com!


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